Day 13: Birding and Chocolate

One of the most sought after birds in the cloud forest is the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock. So today, we scheduled a bird-watching tour with Anderson, the son of the owner of San Tedeo Birding (where we stopped yesterday). The only catch is we had to wake up at 4:30 am to get there in time to see them when they are active!

We got dressed and met Santiago at 5:10 am. We picked up Anderson along the way and headed to a farm to start the journey to see the birds. The farm owners could clear the forest to make more pasture for the cows, but Anderson rents the farm from them to preserve the forest (and the birds). We walked uphill on one of Anderson’s trails for just under half-a-mile as the sun was just starting to rise. We could hear the distinctive call of the Andean Cock-of-the Rock as we got closer.

Heading out before dawn

The sun is starting to rise

At the end of the trail, Anderson built a protected area with a tarp and a fence where we could stand to view the birds. It’s mating season, and a female Andean Cock-of-the Rock lives here, so all the males are stopping by to vocalize and dance in an effort to get the female to choose them.

Bird watching tent

Anderson is a master at this

The bird is named the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock because these birds are found in the Andes region, their red heads look like a chicken’s head, and they typically live on the rocks of rivers. The sound of the river helps mask the sound their wings make when they fly, giving them more protection from predators. They are up in the trees and bushes in the mornings before it gets too sunny out so they can hide better, but still be visible to the female.

Andean Cock-of-the-Rock

Another good shot

I feel like I’m being watched

We spent about an hour watching and listening to the birds before heading back down to the car. We made a quick stop at San Tedeo Birding to drop Anderson off and say hello to the hummingbirds again.

Fun mushrooms on the tree

Hiking back to the car

Wow, thats a big one!

Early morning in Mindo

On our return to the hotel, we found the restaurant and ordered breakfast. We ordered coffee, juices, homemade yogurt and granola, fruit, pancakes, eggs, and did I mention the coffee?

Even so, we didn’t get much sleep the past few nights and by 9:00 am, we were still pretty dang tired. We called an audible on our post-breakfast plan to hike to a waterfall, and decided it would be best to do that tomorrow morning instead. We took the rest of the morning and early afternoon to nap and birdwatch from our awesome balcony. Mindo is in the top five locations in the world with the highest biodiversity for birds. So, even sitting at the hotel, we could see a large variety of species. And sleep.

Steps to our room

Blogging and bird watching

After resting and recharging for the afternoon, we resumed our activities. Santiago picked us up at 4:30 pm and we drove into Mindo (the hotel is technically just outside of the town) for a tour of Yumbos Chocolate. On the way, we stopped by Mechita’s Restaurant — owned by a woman who specializes in traditional food from the Esmeraldas province. She also typically closes around 7:30-8:00 pm, so we pre-ordered before the chocolate tour.

Mechita drive through service

The Yumbos Chocolate building is not a giant warehouse with huge machines and a ton of people working on assembly lines. This is a small, open air, museum exhibit/production center.

We started the tour with Jonathan, one of the employees. He explained the process of how chocolate is made. First you gather the cocoa fruit from the trees. The yellow ones are the best, but red will also do. The cocoa trees only grow near the equator and in low altitudes. So, the trees do not grow here in Mindo. Instead, they work together with a neighboring community who grow the trees, harvest the fruits, and also dry the beans (the rainforest is too wet for that part).

Jonathan shows us cocoa fruits

Close up of the actual fruit

The inside of a coca fruit is white and fleshy and tastes sweet. It’s almost like a pineapple/passionfruit flavor with a lychee texture. You can eat the fruit, make juice, or use it to make alcohols like cocoa wine (with is sweet, not chocolaty). Inside the fruit is the seed — that’s where the chocolate comes from. The seeds have to be harvested by opening each pod and washing away the fruit. Then the seeds are dried.

The dry seeds are sent to Mindo for the rest of the processing. Here in the “factory” they roast the beans, which allows the shell to be peeled. Inside is 100% chocolate. When using good fruit and going through the proper steps, this is tasty, not bitter chocolate. It can be used to make hot chocolate, pure chocolate bars, or for cocoa nibs. They use a machine to separate the peel from the bean, but all mixed together. They then use a sieve and a fan to separate them. The peels can be used along with the chocolate for things like tea, or poor quality “chocolate” candy bars, They also use the shells as fertilizer.

One the pure chocolate is collected, the next step is further grinding into a paste, then mixing until you have a smooth chocolate liquid with the cocoa butter still combined. The can use a press to separate the cocoa butter for other uses (skin care, additional ingredients and such), but all of their chocolate bars include the natural cocoa butter. From there, sugar and additional cocoa butter can be added to obtain the different percentages of dark chocolate.

The next step is tempering the chocolate, which is done by hand on a marble slab in a cold room. natural flavors can be added here ad well, such as ginger, mandarin, coffee, mint, etc. Once it’s tempered and flavored, the chocolate is poured into molds, left to set, then packaged for selling.

When we finished the tour, Jonathan brought us our samples. We started with hot chocolate, made from melting a pure 100% chocolate bar with milk. It was rich, but not sweet since no sugars are added to the 100% chocolate bars. Jonathan also offered us a chocolate face mask (per the aforementioned cocoa butter skin care) which we took up. We sampled the various levels of chocolates from 100% down to 60% along with some of the flavors. The last two samples were a tea made from the cocoa nibs and shells, with lemon and brown sugar added to bring out the flavor. It was great. We now know how to prepare the chocolate tea we have at home. Finally, we had a delicious, rich, and fudgy brownie bite.

Chocolate samples

All of the samples were great, and we learned a lot about the chocolate making process and what makes a good quality chocolate bar. We met back up with Santiago who was waiting for us in the front and took some time to walk a few blocks to check out the town before going to dinner.

Mindo Street Art depicting our morning

Mindo town after a light rain

The food at Michita was amazing, and absolutely huge portions. This was very fortunate for the dog who got a few table scraps. We also had Quinoa Chica to drink, a fermented quinoa (similar to a kombucha). When we couldn’t possibly eat any more, we went back to the hotel for the night.

The restaurant started as an ice cream truck, hence the car

Food for paws

Tomorrow we plan to start with the waterfall hike, and we’ll see where it goes from there!