cacao – The Adventures of Elle Coco

‘You want to make a good chocolate, you have to make a good cacao’

After seven years living in New Zealand it was high time I visited some of the beautiful neighbouring Pacific island nations, famous for snorkelling and diving, surfing, relaxation, and more recently, cacao. Being early August it was still technically the middle of winter for New Zealand, so what better way to shake off the winter blues than head to Vanuatu for two weeks? On this beautiful Pacific archipelago we were lucky enough to meet up with a good friend of mine, Olivier Fernandez of Gaston Chocolate. He greets us with open arms at Port Vila airport, his cheeky grin and sparkling blue eyes a welcome sight after a surprisingly long trip from New Zealand.

Fly to El Salvador

After our Honduran Interlude, we made it to Central America’s smallest and most densely populated country, and the only country in the world named directly after Jesus Christ – ‘El Salvador’ translates to ‘The Saviour’ in English.

We didn’t actually fly into El Salvador though, contrary to the title of this blog post, we just caught the ‘chicken bus’ over from Honduras. But ever since listening to London indie rock band Athlete’s song lyrics to the aptly named ‘El Salvador’ on my bus journeys to school all those years ago, humming along to the lyrics “Fly to El Salvador, I don’t know why and I don’t know what for…”, I’d always had an urge to go to the place, to find out what the “what for” in the song was they were always singing about actually was.

Grow Your Own Chocolate

Since I’m fascinated with where food comes from, the next logical step in my ‘farm-to-table’ ‘bean-to-bar’ chocolate adventures was to try growing my own cacao trees…in London!

It was a challenge, with the first hurdle being to get fresh pods back from Ingemann in Nicaragua through US customs. After enduring a good hours’ worth of questioning by a typically Texan border enforcement official, the pods were let through!