Antigua is a maze of cobblestone streets that run between rows of brightly painted walls and doors that hide tranquil gardens and courtyards. Each corner can look like any other, especially at night and I kept losing my sense of direction, even when I wasn’t enjoying a few adult beverages. There are a few landmarks but I’d advise against using churches as landmarks…there’s about 29 of them and Antigua is not that big.
The Santa Catalina arch connects two blocks and was used by nuns to commute without being seen…which used to be required. Each time I got lost I would keep walking in what I thought was the general direction until I peered around the corner and found the yellow and white beauty rising above the heads of tourists.
Several of the group enjoyed a delicious history lesson, tasting and making class for brown gold…chocolate. Pablo was either the most enthusiastic person in the world, akin to Steve Irwin when delighting us with his extensive knowledge…or he was riding a giant chocolate high. I believe it was both and either way he is great at his job, keeping us engaged in the historical facts and figures was difficult when the smell of chocolate was everywhere. Moving into the kitchen we tried our hands and elbow grease at roasting, de-husking and grinding the beans in mortar and pestle. The resulting bitter paste was infused with hot water, honey, chili and aniseed to create Mayan hot chocolate. The legend goes that if you like it with honey you must have Mayan noble ancestry – honey was scarce and reserved for royalty. I loved it, not too sweet, rich and spicy. I must have been a princessa in a previous life. Hopefully without a sacrificial end. To infuse the mix it is poured from jug to jug, start low and the raise your arm to pour from an increasing height. It’s fairly easy to spill it everywhere.
The Spanish didn’t like the local name, cacahtl (or something like that) because they didn’t like the idea of eating caca. So it morphed into chocolate instead, developed through other international innovations to make milk chocolate, slab chocolate, sweet chocolate and the demand was met with slave labour in African colonies to grow cacao trees. To this day west Africa grows the majority of the world’s cacao beans while Germany consumes the most per capita.
We tasted Mayan hot chocolate, the early form of Spanish hot chocolate made with the ground up cacao, hot milk, sugar, black pepper, vanilla and infused by swirling with a molinillo rapidly spun between the hands, like trying to light a fire with two sticks. It was sweet, grainy goodness. The thin husk peeled off the roasted beans is also made into a tea, steeped for several minutes in hot water. The chemical released has benefits that seem to read like an opposite of caffeine – interesting that both are found in chocolate.
We also tried our hands at filling molds with 70% cocoa content melted chocolate and flavouring with mint, nuts, Oreos, cardamom, coconut, ginger, salt, chili, sprinkles, cacao nibs and more. I’m rationing my block of three flavours trying to make it last longer than a week. Something to remember – when chocolate gets the white spots on it…that’s not necessarily old…it’s had tempering breaks. If you put it in the fridge, partially melt it, let it harden again, or basically subject it to changes in its temperatures, the tempering is changed and the spots appear and the texture changes. Also of note, most cocoa butter is skimmed off, replaced with inferior palm oil or other butters and sold for cosmetics, moisturizers, to make suppositories and is 55% of the content in ground beans. So good chocolate, that actually retains its original cocoa butter instead of inferior replacements is the best. If you’re going to smash some chocolate, make sure it’s the good stuff. Oh and white chocolate is not chocolate. It’s cocoa butter (or a replacement), sugar, vanilla and milk.
Next stop was a salsa lesson with pocket rocket, Martin Cabrera at his studio that also acts like a comedy show to the passerby since it’s open air. Either way we had a good time working up a sweat for an hour going over the steps, turns, spins, flowing arm and hip shaking moves. Martin is a master of the art and his solo show at the Rainbow Cafe salsa party later that night was one of the most beautiful shows of human art I’ve seen since the mesmorising tango of Argentina. I’m definitely taking lessons when I’m settled again, beats any gym class. Hands. Down.
As I said, we went to the Rainbow Cafe’s salsa masquerade party – I was e only one who hunted out a face mask to wear, but then again I also needed dancing shoes. Thongs (flip flops) just make it painful. A few cheap cuba libres and infectious music got us up on the floor to try out our moves in the tiny cramped dance floor and it was a riot. Martin took us through the moves again and everyone had a great time. The professionals again made it look easy deviating from the basic steps and burning up the floor, simply sensational. Pablo, the dynamo from Choco Museo met us there and pulled a few moves on the dance floor, beer in hand. A man of many talents, we had a fabulous time, dancing off into the night.
After several weeks on the road the full day spa indulgence we enjoyed the following day was heavenly. I was massaged, salt scrubbed, reflexologied, mud packed, steamed, jacuzzied, manicured, pedicured and hair-oiled, cut and dried over the course of about seven hours to the tune of about 180USD. Blisssssssssssssss
