Day 14: Quito We started our day off with a delicious breakfast, this was probably the best breakfast we’ve had on the trip. On our road trip back to Quito we saw a forest fire on one of the mountains. Diego discussed how forest fires are very common on hot days like today. We had asked if authorities would put out the fires but he explained that 1.) there are not enough fire-fighters or air helicopters to divert from the in town disasters and 2.) the people believe that the fire and even smoke will promote clouds and bring rain because of this many forest fires on the mountains are usually just left to burn out on their own.
The top of the volcano
Our first stop of today was a cable car ride where we went up to the top of the Pichincha volcano. We went from 10,000 feet to 13,00 feet up on the cable car, and then hiked the volcano for a little bit. The view from the top was beautiful and over looked the city of Quito. As we continued our hike, we came across a swing that you swing over the edge of the volcano. Our next stop was the Jardin Botanico De Quito, a Botanical Garden. This place was so beautiful and there were so many different plant species there. One area of the garden was an orchid garden. There were several different species of orchids, I never realized just how many different species there were. One of the orchids we saw was the Trichocero, which has adapted its flower bud to resemble a fly. The purpose of this adaption is to attract a live fly to land on the flower, who then pollinates the flower. It was really cool to see.
The Trichocero, the fly flower bud
Our next stop of the day was to the Pacari Chocolate Factory, which was founded 18 years ago by Santiago. According to our guide, the factory pays its farmers according to the effort they put into growing the cacao as well as the amount of time they work with the chocolate. Pacari is 100% organic, vegan, K Parve certified, biodynamic quality, and Kosher. The process of making chocolate: 1.) Picking the cacao plants, the inside of the cacao bean is usually a dark purple. 2.) The fermentation process. In the beginning, when the factory was first founded, they would wrap the cacao beans in banana leaves and leave them for a personification of time to ferment the chocolate. This process needed to be closely monitor for the possibility that over fermentation could occur. Today, the use of a three-level wooden box system is used to ferment the chocolate. The beans are dropped on each level for two days each, because they are constantly moved, over fermentation can not take place. 3.) The drying process. They lay out all the beans on a flat surface (some farmers even dry the beans on the road) and let dry. This process usually takes about three to five days depending on the humidity. Next the beans are hand selected, ground up, melted, molded and then self-packaged. After we were informed about the history of Pacari and the process of making the chocolate, we were able to taste test a few of their best-selling chocolates. Now I am not a fan of dark chocolate, it is far too bitter for my tastes but the chocolate was actually good. Once our taste testing was finished we were invited to go shopping for chocolate. If there was a flavor of chocolate we wanted to try, the employees were more than willing to open a new pack for us to try it. I think a few of us almost tried every single flavor. I started to get chocolated out.
Pacari Chocolate
After we finished shopping, we headed back to our hotel to check in. Once we were settled in our rooms, we were left to fend for ourselves again for dinner. The walk to dinner was a little scary for us girls because there were a group of men basically cat calling us and making inappropriate comments, even with several men walking with us but we made it to dinner. For dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant where we got nachos and tacos. We finished up, met back up with our professor then headed back to the hotel for the night. We were all so exhausted that we got ready for bed right away and slept til the next morning.