Chuao

Coordinates: 10°29′30″N 67°31′40″W / 10.49167°N 67.52778°W / 10.49167; -67.52778 Chuao is a small village located in the northern coastal range of the Aragua state, in central Venezuela, some 4 Km. SSE from the shore.^[1] The village, founded in the 16th century, is famous for its cacao plantations where some of the finest cocoa beans in the world grow in the wild.^[2] The village is surrounded by mountains and dense rainforests to the South and by the Caribbean Sea to the North. There is no road access and so visitors must come by boat from Puerto Colombia, next to the town of Choroni Beach along the coast to the West, or by foot, crossing the mountains and the luxurious cloud forest from Turmero, near Maracay, the state capital, a 5 to 7-hour hike.

In the Chuao plantations there are currently pure Criollo and hybrid varieties of cacao, which nowadays are hardly being harvested or exploited, mostly in a manual, anachronistic fashion. Unlike other regions of Venezuela where cacao is grown, harvested, and processed in an industrial scale and using modern technology, in Chuao the great abundance of cacao trees still grow in centuries-old plantations, now abandoned, bear fruits and beans which are mostly wasted, left to rot. In front of the town's church, there is a patio where cocoa beans used to be sun-dried, and next to the church there is a Cacao Museum depicting the manual process to obtain chocolate used in the past.

Criollo beans from Chuao are of a very high quality, and are considered among Venezuela's finest, together with Carenero Superior, grown and exploited in the region of Barlovento, and Porcelana beans from the southern shores of Lake Maracaibo (another genetically pure variety of Criollo).

Gallery

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  Chuao Bay

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  Cacao pods in the Chuao plantation

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  Chuao cocoa beans under the sun

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  Plaza de secado (drying plaza). The church yard where some cocoa beans are sun-dried

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  Plaza de secado (drying plaza). Boy helping his mother to collect cocoa beans. Chuao. Venezuela

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  Plaza de secado (drying plaza). Woman collecting some cocoa away from the sun. Chuao. Venezuela

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  Cocoa under fermentation (hardly an industry).

References

1. ^ [1] Chuao - Costa del Estado Aragua (in Spanish)
2. ^ [2] The Cacao Women Project

External links