My Dad went back home on Sunday night planning to join us back later in the week, and Karin and the boys also left on Sunday afternoon.
Monday morning we decided to go visit the Museum of Chocolate. It was fun and fascinating!
Did you know that cacao was discovered by the Mayans in Central America? They would grow it in their yards and the drink they made from it was enjoyed by everyone in every social class. Cacao was so important to the Mayan culture that it was used as a currency.
The cacao pods grow on the trunk and the branches of the tree, just as the picture shows.
When opened, they pods contain the beans that are covered by this whitish coat. This is where the cacao bean stores its sugar.
The seeds are dried with the whitish coat (that aids the fermentation process) and plantain leaves.
The dried beans get shelled (and the shells get saved for cacao tea), and they get crushed into a paste. The Mayans would do this with the grinding stone over fire, which would heat the paste up and drip it into the cups they would set by the stone. It was a bitter drink that they would enjoy as a part of their lives.
We all tried our hand at grinding the cacao bean that turns into a paste. After further processing that went beyond the Mayans’ rustic methods we get the refined chocolate products that we are familiar with.
The grooves on the grinding stone were there so that the heated paste would melt and drip into the cups they put on the sides of the stone.
During our visit, we discovered Cacao Tea. The shells of the cacao bean can be boiled to make cacao tea.
There were all kinds of cacao products to enjoy!
After the museum, we went to the most popular Guatemalan fast food restaurant chain, Pollo Campero. As anyone can imagine, this was a craving of mine for quite a few years.
As I was enjoying my chicken, what was my great surprise when I see the familiar faces of another classmate’s husband and sons walking through the same restaurant! Sure enough, she was trailing right behind them. It was fun to chat for a few minutes!
My friend Skarlett.
When we left the restaurant, Ben and Benny set out to the grocer while the rest of us began our walk home in the hopes of getting ahead of the rain.
The walk was fun and as it always is in Antigua, full of colorful and interesting sights. We almost managed to escape the rain. By the time we got a couple of streets before our house, it was already raining and we decided to keep going, for fun. We got home drenched but we certainly missed the worst of the storm. Ben and Benny ended up taking a Tuk Tuk to stay dry.
The river in front of our house.
Heavy rains + poor drainage systems = a nightmare for driving but = fun river for kids
And to top off our night, my Mama made me another favorite meal. Enchiladas. These are basically pickled beets and cabbage, shredded beef, a tomato sauce, a slice of a hard boiled egg on a leaf of lettuce (which is the only thing we didn’t have) on top of a deep fried tortilla.
