The remote southern Toledo region of Belize country does not make it onto many tourist itineraries, but it can be a great destination for summer. You might not be aware of it, but there are reports of specialty chocolate tours and hands-on lessons offered at farms spread across the lush valleys and hills of Toledo. Any of these activities should be perfect for families vacationing in Belize.

Try When Vacationing In Belize

In San Felipe, a village of about 65 homes is home to families who have been farming specialty chocolate for generations. Get a guide who will lead into the cacao trees, where you will find oblong yellow pods from trunks. With a whack of a club, it will split open to reveal the goo-covered seeds. You can remove one, put it in your mouth, suck off the sweet tart pulp, and then spitting the seed to the ground. The pulp does not take like chocolate at all, which is made from the seed.

The people in this village make their specialty chocolate right in their cramped concrete kitchens, using a pile of dried, roasted and peeled cacao beans and old grinding stones. For most of them, this was their main way of living, paying for the needs of their children and even for their education. Using the grinding stones, the beans are shattered and mixed with wild vanilla, allspice and sugar. A savory odor should then linger in the air.

Toledo Cacao Growers Association

These villagers have found a way to connect ancient cacao farming with the modern craze for quality, fair-trade products. Their five-hour chocolate tour starts with a visit to their organic cacao farm, which they sell to the Toledo Cacao Growers Association, a non-profit coalition of about a thousand small farms that sells to acclaimed chocolatier Green & Black’s. The tour moves to their home, where they will lead a Mayan chocolate-making session.

Just down the road, on the banks of the Moho River, the Cotton Tree Lodge produces its own brand of chocolate. The one-room, 100-bar-a-day operation has refrigerators and special chocolate-blending machines powered in part by solar panels. Cotton Tree runs weeklong chocolate packages and day trips, giving guests a chance to tour a nearby cacao farm, and then peeling toasted cacao beans while sipping on pinnul, a traditional drink of cacao and corn.

Note, though, that the work is slow going, and you will need more than 30 minutes to peel enough beans to be ground into a single bar of chocolate. Afterwards, you will use the matate until the oil of the seeds adds a shiny luster to the brown paste. Once it becomes creamy enough, it will be poured into molds and set the bars out to harden. You can buy previously made specialty chocolate and cocoa powder.

Where Is Toledo?

Toledo is a about a 50-minute plane ride from Belize City. You can also reach the district via a 5-hour drive down the improved Southern Highway. The final 9-mile stretch of dirt is still being paved, and daily express bus service is offered on school buses painted with Rasta colors based in Punta Gorda. On your next travel to Belize, contact your Belize hotel concierge for day trips to this part of the country.