Ever wonder where chocolate comes from? It starts its life inside a pod that grows from a plant called cacao on a lush mountainside in a wet forest in the tropics. How do I know? I went there to find out.
We recently visited Finca Hekiti (Finca means “farm”, Hekiti means “one” in the Taino language) for an educational experience in a cacao forest in the Las Marias Mountains west of Mayaguez. In addition to learning the farming practices used on an agro-ecological site to grow and harvest fine-grain cacao, we learn about the importance of agroforestry, permaculture, and nature conservation.
Our tour guide was Ricardo, who purchased these four acres of extremely hilly, lush land with his wife Vivienne in 2014.
The family lives in this tricked-out shipping container when on the farm
Ricardo, a tall, rangy man with a curly beard, taught us that cacao doesn’t grow in neatly tended rows, like you’ll find on a farm, but as part of a symbiotic forest ecosystem. It nestles among other trees, many of them bearing fruit such as bananas and oranges, and plants that all have their own roles. The cacao tree does need to be pruned and maintained, but there is no irrigation. It gets sun and water at the whim of nature, including enduring a six-to-seven-month-long rainy season every year. Ricardo explained how he uses a process called grafting to improve new plants and make existing ones stronger.
Ricardo beside a cacao tree. The orange pod is ripe. The green one is not ready yet.
He took us on a half-mile hike around the extremely steep and windy agroforest, stopping frequently to show us medicinal plants and explain their purposes (in addition to letting us smell and taste them). We chewed a plant that numbs the mouth, and one that is used for brushing teeth!
Images of Cacao
Cacao on the treeA cacao podThe inside of a podThe pulp (which tastes like mango)A cacao seed, cut in halfDark chocolate for tasting
We tasted dark chocolate with hints of cinnamon and cayenne pepper. Delicious!
Finca Hekiti doesn’t process the cacao, so we didn’t get to watch him turn the cacao beans into chocolate. That actually takes a long time, including fermenting, drying, winnowing, roasting, and flavoring. He is planning to produce cocoa nibs, which are small pieces of crushed cacao beans that have abundant health benefits. Learn more here.
If you’re ever in Puerto Rico, you can find this tour through AirbBnB Experiences or on the Finca Hekiti Facebook page. The cost was $25 each, plus tax, quite reasonable for 3 1/2 hours.
When Bob and I lived in Puerto Rico in the 1990s, the US Navy owned a large chunk of Vieques. It had bought 22,000 acres, or about two-thirds of the island, from the native inhabitants in the 1940s, and used 8,000 acres on the western end of the island as a naval ammunition depot until 2001, when the property was returned to the island. You can read the history here, including Vieques residents’ health effects from the Naval presence and protests to force the Navy to leave the island.
But long story short, despite negative effects, the long US Navy presence meant that huge swaths of the island were never developed. So today it is the Vieques National Wildlife Refuge, considered one of the most ecologically diverse refuges in the Caribbean and the largest wildlife refuge in the region.
It has beautiful, undeveloped beaches and stellar snorkeling, and a few hiking trails. (Unfortunately, a large chunk of the land is not open to the public because of the danger from possible encounters with unexploded ordnance, which the Navy is slowly cleaning up.)
Beach Hopping & Snorkeling
Snorkeling and pristine beaches are the island’s main draws, and we came with our own gear, prepared to take advantage of both. With only 2½ days to explore, we could barely taste the multitude of beaches started with Chiva Beach (formerly the Naval Base’s Blue Beach), which had a bit of dried sargassum along its shoreline but was still lovely, with clear turquoise water and reefs just a short swim out. There were a number, but we did the best we could! The Vieques Insider website was a great resource for the best places to pull on our fins and masks and wade into the water.
Here are the highlights:
Pelicans were everywhere
Chiva Beach: We passed a number of individual entrances to the beach, numbered, with parking for just one or two cars at each. We finally chose #10 and settled ourselves in the shade among the mangroves, when a huge iguana pooped spectacularly from a branch behind us. How often do you get to witness that? A little lizard also watched us curiously, and many majestic pelicans flew by.
I snorkeled there and saw some lovely coral and a multitude of undersea life. On my way back into shore, I found myself in the magical middle of an enormous school of dancing silverfish.
Caracas Beach: Caracas is a larger beach on a bay with lovely, calm water for swimming, and even parking, shelters, and even a bathroom, something the smaller beaches were lacking. There we relaxed on a concrete strip among the trees and watched the visiting horses wander around and forage in the garbage.
View from our perch
Visiting horses looking for snacks
In fact, we ran into horses everywhere we went. Also, weirdly, a wild pig.
Esperanza Beach: Esperanza Beach, near the town by the same name on the south coast, is primarily a local hangout, a little grittier than the others because of the parking lot behind us in which men smoked weed and teens hung out, but we enjoyed its charms. Its most striking feature is a deserted concrete pier which provides an eerie, fascinating snorkel experience. You can dart between the coral-encrusted pylons and watch fish swimming in and out among old anchors and piles of thick rope abandoned on the seafloor below. I almost ran into huge purple jellyfish a couple of times. People claimed sea turtles hang out underneath the pier, but we weren’t lucky enough to see any. Kids jump off the pier into the water on weekends.
Playa Esperanza and its old pier
Black Sand Beach: We had to hike for six-tenths of a mile through lush woods to reach Black Sand Beach, though the GPS first took us down a long, incredibly bumpy, narrow dirt road to a cliff near the beach. Black Sand Beach is so named because it boasts volcanic sand, but we found it to be overhyped. The walk was lovely, but the beach itself was not a place where you would want to hang out, and the so-called “black sand” just made the area look dirty. However, the views of the sea crashing into the cliffs were spectacular. Here’s a video of the beach.
Pata Prieta Beach: Pata Prieta, not far from Chiva, offered some gorgeous snorkeling along the rocky east side of its cove. Among the vast quantity of sea life we encountered while swimming in shallow water above the coral reef, I saw a small barracuda and even an octopus! He was hiding in plain sight on the seafloor, camouflaged among the rocks and plants. I only recognized him because I had seen the documentary My Octopus Teacheron Netflix. He crept along as I watched him, before finally deciding to launch himself and swim away, shedding his rocky camouflage and revealing himself to be a translucent orange swimmer.
Our private spot in the mangroves
Our view
Bioluminescent Bay Tour
The highlight of our trip was the touristy experience everyone needs to have, a Bioluminescent Bay Tour. We went out in transparent double kayaks the first night to see the brightest bioluminescent bay in the world with Taino Aqua Adventures. Our guide, Kevin, took us out into Mosquito Bay in the darkness of a waxing moon under mercifully cloudy skies, and the water shimmered green, blue, or white (depending on your vision) with every stroke of the paddle. The water also sparkled underneath the boat as we moved through the inky water. It was magical!
But actually, it was science. Kevin explained that the luminescence in the bay is caused by a microorganism, the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium Bahamense, which glows whenever the water is disturbed, leaving a trail of neon blue.
Sorry, because of the darkness and the fact that our hands were busy paddling, we were not able to get any photos or video. You can see what it looks like on Taino Aqua Adventures’ website.
Photos courtesy of https://www.tainoaquaadventures.com/
We have so much more to share, but I think you are just going to need to visit Vieques yourself!
I adore kayaking, so I booked a Kayak Tour of the Sabana River, which is at the other end of the playa from our condo in Luquillo. We got so much more than we bargained for! For just $30 apiece, Bob and I found ourselves on a fascinating eco and historical tour offered by Ramon of Sun Capital Paddlesports. Ramon introduced us to the Sabana River Estuary of the Northeast Ecological Corridor, a breathlessly beautiful a protected natural area.
After a short but very thorough lesson on how to kayak, Ramon led us and just three other people, he on a stand-up paddleboard and us in two-person kayaks, as we navigated several branches of the river. He pulled out a map before we started and explained the history of the area, what used to be here, what had happened to it.
We learned that Luquillo was the first place Christopher Columbus saw when he discovered Puerto Rice in the 1400s. The Taino Indians were living here at the time, and he has discovered their petroglyphs upriver, toward El Yunque peak and the rain forest, evidence that they traveled in that direction to avoid the invading Spaniards.
Roman told us about a past sugar cane plantation, a cow farm, and then how this area because a protected corridor in 2013, after the community rose up against developers who wanted to build more resorts on Puerto Rico.
Northeast Ecological Corridor
The Northeast Ecological Corridor consists of almost 3,000 lush acres of land along the Atlantic Coast in the northeast corner of Puerto Rico. It is home to native red bats, which we saw flying around over our heads as we passed under a bridge.
I did a little digging into this protected area, and found this from Sierra Club Puerto Rico:
The Northeast Ecological Corridor is an incredibly biodiverse tract of land covering nearly 3,000 acres of lowland tropical forest, mangroves, wetlands, sandy beaches, seagrass beds, and coral reefs. The Corridor stretches over five miles of undeveloped beach, from Luquillo to Fajardo, and not only serves as a beloved “backyard” for thousands of locals, but also is one of only two sites in the Caribbean where endangered leatherback sea turtles come on land to nest. The largest of all turtles, leatherbacks lay their eggs on the Corridor’s beaches from March until July. A few months later, the babies hatch and crawl back to the sea.
Only a few years ago, the Northeast Ecological Corridor’s status as one of the last remaining tracts of undeveloped coastline in Puerto Rico was under threat. Resort developers wanted to buy up the land and build hotels, a plan that would have both social and environmental consequences.
Here’s a map of the corridor:
Endangered Leatherback Turtles
Perhaps its most important function is to host the nesting grounds of endangered leatherback turtles (tinglars, in Spanish), which grow to be up to seven feet long.
Photo provided by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region
Ramon explained why the street lights along the coast in Luquillo are red – not just to reduce ambient light, as we had suspected, but to keep the turtles from going in the wrong direction after they lay their eggs. They look for the light of the moon reflected in the ocean, and white streetlights can confuse them. Isn’t that interesting?
The Sierra Club puts on a Leatherback Turtle Festival every spring to promote awareness of the gentle giants, attracting 25,000 people to Luquillo Beach with music, food trucks, activities, and turtle-themed crafts.
There’s also a local nonprofit called Tortugas del Sur that dedicates itself to helping these endangered creatures breed successfully during nesting season.
Other Creatures Along the River
We also passed this humongous iguana on the eco-tour, as well as the largest termite nest I have ever seen.
We also saw an osprey and a great blue heron, two majestic sea birds that I love, Unfortunately, they were in flight and my hands were occupied with paddles, so I couldn’t get their pictures.
Ramon made sure to take plenty of pictures of participants in the tour, the best souvenir imaginable.
Hats off to Ramon, who dedicates his life to taking care of this delicate region, taking groups on these tours to give them a fascinating experience and cultivate carrying about the Corridor and the turtles! Five Stars!
