mmmm chocolate!

This Wednesday the SOs went to the Belmont and River Antoine Estates on the north of the Island.
It took us over an hour to get there and I am very glad I took a dramamine before! 
We first stopped at the River Antoine Estate, where they make Rivers Rum.  I'm not a drinker, but it's still interesting to see how things are made - and it was included in the tour ;)
Did you know that rum is just fermented sugar cane juice? Well I didn't before I moved to Grenada either... and it SMELLS while fermenting!  But the coolest part was that the distillery still uses the water wheel they have been using since 1785! 225 years!! crazy!
And it was a beautiful area... lots of flowers!  The northern end of the island is certainly getting more rain than we are!  It's a dessert in the south!

bundles of sugar cane ready to go through the grinder

the water wheel from 1785! it turns the grinders that squeeze all the juice out of the sugar cane

grinding & the one guy is in flip flops

the left over cane stalks they wheel over and dump here & I guess they lay there forever... until they rot? could had added to the smell....

boiling the sugar juice to ferment it.... and another reason I don't drink rum. YUCK!

I wasn't pay attention at this point... but it was hot, so I guess they were boiling it some more

drinking their rum on the job?
in Grenada anything goes...  drinking and driving is even legal!

and this is how they bottle it......... by hand. from a cooler. seriously.

my friends :)

We left the Rivers Estate and drove about 10 minutes to the Belmont Estate, where they have had a cocoa (and other fruits and vegetables) plantation owned by the French since the 1700s also!
It was also very beautiful with trees and flowers... lots of caged animals too -monkeys, parrots, turtles, goats....
We got a tour of how chocolate is made & was told about how the plantation operated in the 1700s.  It is actually still owned by the same family! and is still a fully functioning plantation! they also have a restaurant, that looked really good, but I packed my lunch to save money :)

the inside of a cocoa pod... we actually ate the cocoa beans like this and they taste nothing like chocolate! 
It was a sweet/sour kind of taste

after they are scooped out of the pods they are put in here to sweat/ferment...
this also smelled gross.

then they put them out in the sun to dry
these palates are on wheels so they can cover them quickly if it rains

they have to be walked on every half hour so they don't stick together, so they let the little kids do it

the beans before they're turned into chocolate

Chocolate!!
they had 71% and 60% chocolate
I prefer the 60

this bell is from the 1700s, it was used to call the slaves in from the fields!
and it's been in this same tree for hundreds of years... 

18th century french bed! at the restaurant

Then... on our way back we went through the Grand Etang Forest and it's a very windy, up the mountain kind of road...... and our bus over heated! but it was ok... because some of my friends hadn't been to Grand Etang before and they got to see the lake!

smoking bus