From SV Amekaya, I got the name and phone number of Gary, the owner of this farm, and I called him in the morning for an appointment for the eco-tour he offers.<\/p>\n
We took the tender and arrived at 1200. James, an American volunteer, welcomed us together with a local young man, Oazis.(I’m not sure about the spelling of his name.)<\/p>\n
Immediately the tour started with explanations on 2 dugout canoes lying high up out of the water at the shore. We learned about the problems with a kind of sea worms damaging the wood of these boats, vital for the daily life of all families living in the Bocas. Making these boats it’s also not easy. The sap of the tree which must be used is poisonous.<\/p>\n
Then Gary came and the tour got into full swing.<\/p>\n
Gary founded the Planet Rehab NPO , which takes care of local plants and especially trees to protect the forests being vital for mankind to survive. More can be read at https:\/\/planetrehab.org\/.<\/p>\n
The eco-tour we took is done by the www.greenacreschocolatefarm.com<\/p>\n
In Gary, both organization’s activities melt into one operation.<\/p>\n
The tour through the slightly touched jungle was very interesting. About half of the property is slightly touched jungle, the other half is almost untouched jungle. They only plant trees there, which are endangered species.<\/p>\n
Gary also explained about what, 150 years ago, was done by the United Fruits Company, now known by their Chiquita banana brand. They chopped down large areas of the rainforest to grow bananas. Thus, many of several hundred years growing trees got lost. One of that kind of trees is on his property; 350 years old. The banana business collapsed later. I assume there was no reforestation made by United Fruits Company. Destroying nature for money and run when no money can be made anymore.<\/p>\n
On our walk through the jungle we saw sloths and a toucan up in the high trees. Oazis, the local young man is really an expert in spotting animals high up in the trees. This experience starting in his childhood. With a green laser he points to the animal so we normal people can also see the animals.<\/p>\n
The atmosphere in this forest is fascinating. I could have sat down somewhere and just look around and absorb what is around me.<\/p>\n
We learned a lot about plants and especially trees. Gary explained about a fungus in soil used by trees to exchange information etc. I was surprised about this theory.
\nI searched the web and herrb are some links to be found:
\nhttps:\/\/duckduckgo.com\/?q=hiw+do+trees+communicate&t=fpas&ia=web. Please note that this is only a search result; nothing read nor evaluated.<\/p>\n
We also ate for the first time freshly cracked open cocoa fruit. The white part around the beans tastes sweet, whereas the cocoa bean tastes a bit bitter. The sweet-bitter combination tastes very well. Towards the end of the tour we saw the fermentation and drying process of the cocoa beans, the simple device to roast and a grinder, which even uses a vacuum cleaner to separate the nips from the husks. Simple, reliable, just the right size for the small chocolate production they run on the farm and selling some products only in the farm.<\/p>\n
Returning to the main building we got to taste a bunch of products made from cocoa beans from this farm. Starting with a cocoa tea, small pieces of sweets with chocolate on top, to chocolate rum, and chocolate liquors like the known Baileys but much better tasting.<\/p>\n
We purchased chocolate tea and bar of chocolate to be used for cooking.<\/p>\n
With a lot of impressions we returned to MaRe and spent the rest of the day at anchor letting the impressions settle in our mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From SV Amekaya, I got the name and phone number of Gary, the owner of this farm, and I called him in the morning for an appointment for the eco-tour he offers. We took the tender and arrived at 1200. James, an American volunteer, welcomed us together with a local young man, Oazis.(I’m not sure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-13"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}