Cocoa Ooze Blog Madagascar Day 6

I jumped out of bed to catch the sunrise at 5.45am which was one of those lovely experiences that I'll never forget. We then opted for a morning swim and early breakfast of fresh fruit before we set of for the most exciting part of the trip to visit the 2 cocoa plantations.First we visited the MAVA plantation and was greeted by Tomas Wenisch who was the manager of the plantation. He started his job in January this year after Michelle his predecessor was in charge for nearly 40 years and still there passing the ropes over to Tomas. Tomas was open, kind, honest and explained to us about the plantation and all the work they do there.There is 1700 hecres on site and 700 are dedicated to Cocoa growing. We visited one of the farms which was managed by Tsiory. I was surprised how little cocoa grows on some of the trees but it was explained that they have to devolop the fields over many years in order to make them fully productive, each trees annually only creates around 6kg of raw cocoa. When this is fermented and dried its final weight is around 2kg!Each tree is planted around 4 metres from each other to allow plenty of shade from trees such as banana trees to protect the cocoa. Each plot produces around 1.3 tons of cocoa and each tree has around 38% crop per tree which then goes onto the next stage. The cocoa then get fermented over 6 days in 4 different boxes, getting changed over at specific times. All of which is led by Safia who is the fermentation manager. After this stage they then get placed out in the sun to dry before getting quality checked and packed.The interesting thing about the cocoa is there that there is 3 different types - forastero which is purple, trinitario which is white/purple and criollo which is white. Criollo seems to be the best variety of cocoa and this is the one that they try to replant to grow better cocoa.We then visited the Organice plantation which was managed by Rene Julien. What a great character! He was very energetic, outgoing and had all his team in line and order. We then opened a cocoa pod with a machete - an nerve wracking but memorable experience! We then got the chance to plant our own developed cocoa tree! What a exciting day and seeing all the great work these cocoa farmers do!