Friday was an IFSA program tour, all costs covered which meant I was going regardless of our destination, by serendipity our destination was Tirimbina, a biological reserve that always gives guided tours of a traditional cacao plantation. Heavenly! IFSA always treats its students well, we had a private air conditioned van for the two and a half hour drive. The "tour" wasn't as I´d supposed, to be a walk, but rather a participatory lesson on how you take a cacao pod and turn it into chocolate. I got to taste the cacao fruit, actually quite good even if it looked suspiciously slimy to begin with. We were then shown and "allowed" to smell the seeds in different stages: fermentation, drying, roasting. Once we got to roasting we also got to tasting- trying some bitter but oh so delicious cocoa nibs, the ground nibs with sugar and cinamon and then a traditional drink of the aforementioned mix, followed by a barrage of chocolate, both in liquid and solid form. I was could not have been happier. Done with our gluttony we were shown the plantation. I had always imagined cacao pods growing in clusters like coconuts but instead they dangle individually from the normally arching trunk. Not that we were hungry for lunch after that, but IFSA of course provided a scrumptious full casado meal and cake (one girl's birthday had recently passed). Suffice to say we got back to the bus fully satiated, a wonderful trip/day, thank you very much IFSA.
Saturday morning one friend and I made the trek to Volcano Irazu, a two hour bus ride from San Jose, up through the mountains. When we reached the volcano we were freezing, it was raining and just plain cold, I could not believe I was in Costa Rica. Thankfully the rain stopped after about twenty minutes and we got to enjoy the spectacular view, of the valley below us as well as the two large crater pits that from Volcano Irazu, further away from the tourist area a mountain peak was smoking, a small "eruption" we later found out. Got to chat with a lovely old Japanese man who spoke English and who was traveling alone. Finished out our trip with a return visit to our breakfast spot in San Jose, that we'd encountered in a quick rush for coffee before our bus left.
Classes are starting to heat up here with a bit of work, but looking forward all the same to Límon on the Caribbean coast this coming weekend as class field trip.
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