Our family loves theme parks, swimming pools, and chocolate, so we jumped on the chance to tour a chocolate plantation on our 2019 vacation to the big island of Hawaii.
The Original Hawaiian Chocolate Company offers small group tours of its facilities. Located up in the hills of Kailua Kona, the drive to the plantation/factory tour is through lush vegetation with stunning ocean views. I was surprised to find that The Original Hawaiian Chocolate Company is located in a primarily residential area, with acres of land for their operations.
Chocolate can only be grown in a few places around the world and Hawaii happens to be the ideal tropical climate. We were given a tour by the owner of the company, Bob Cooper.
The tour took about sixty minutes, starting with the source, cocoa trees. It was a hot and humid morning, so it felt nice to stand under the shade of the trees and learn how chocolate, or rather cocoa fruit, grows.
After our close-up view of the trees, Mr. Cooper took us to a covered tent, where he demonstrated how to cut open the large cacao fruit pods. Inside the pods are white beans and a sticky, sweet liquid. Cute geckos waited on the table so that they could eat the spilled liquid.
The beans are removed and dried on large, flat wooden trays. They will stay like this for several days.
We were taken indoors to see the roasting machines.
Our attention and patience was rewarded with chocolate samples!
and of course, every tour ends in the gift shop. We signed the guest book and bought a few bars.
If you love chocolate and don’t know how it is made, the tour at the Original Hawaiian Chocolate Company is a great bit of education. I have to admit that our family was a little restless. At the time, my step kids were 12 and 9, plus they already knew a lot about chocolate from multiple tours of the Cadbury Factory in England. I think the kids and us, were slightly less interested, than if we had come into the experience with zero knowledge. That said, this was one of our cheaper activities at 20.00 for adults and free for the kids. We enjoyed the chocolate and it’s also nice to support a local, artisanal company.