After a week or so in Cuenca, we headed back down to Guayaquil, our last city before heading out of Ecuador - but no rest yet! On the next day, we headed out to Cacao y Mango, near Naranjal.
The farm is small and family owned. Ninfa, one of the family members and our guide, told us that the farm has been in her family for 70 years. The family knowledge of plant production was incredible - they grow everything, from cacao to rice to tilapia.
The family only grows CCN-51, a modified plant, for cacao sale. The price is the same on the market as it would be for Arriba, but the gm plants produce 3 times the amount of fruit. No market demand for better product, not production. This doesn't mean that they don't care - they keep a few arriba plants for home use, and that's the type we made.
Ninfa showed us one of her family recipies for hot chocolate. She told us that the recipe was passed from her mother, who had learned it from her mother. The recipe is only passed through one child (her sisters didn't learn the recipe). We won't give away the whole thing, but it involved lemongrass and cacao. It was delicious.