Theobroma Cacao: Cacao Tree

So..... my brother sent me these pictures from a chocolate plantation he and his family visited this summer. Look at this cacao fruit... all red and cute :)
Then it grows and grows..........

an look what is inside.... GOLD!!! the cocoa seeds (all gluey and stuffy first)... so valuable that the Aztecs used to trade them with the Mayas and used them as currency... Oh yea!!!

As a historic note... in 1492 when Christopher Columbus showed the beans to Queen Isabel and Fernando they did not care! It was not until 1519 that Hernando Cortez realized the value of the beans and, as a good entrepreneur, began a Plantation. He saw the value and took advantage of it!!! Thank God!!! He took the beans to Spain to Carlos V and had the idea of adding sugar, vanilla, cloves and cinnamon to cocoa drink to take away the bitterness of the Aztec original chocolate drink, which was made with cocoa beans, water, cornmeal, chilly peppers and achiote (annato seeds).

Take a look of the seeds after the plantation workers ferment, dried, clean and roast them mostly by hand (they still do this by hand, just like in Precolombian America).

Fermenting, drying and roasting the seeds... and then how do they look at the end: