Speaker 1: I'm in the co pilot seat of this small Cessna
Speaker 1: plane and we're circling the Bolivian Amazon. Beside me, pilot
Speaker 1: sweating because we're looking for a place to land and
Speaker 1: we can't find one. The weather was bad and and
Speaker 1: the pilot was nervous, and it was it was quite exciting.
Speaker 1: Behind me. Is this guy just been a day ago?
Speaker 1: This German accou hunter named Volker Lahman. Bolker looks a
Speaker 1: bit like the German director Werner Herzog. Sounds like him too.
Speaker 1: The more dangerous or tricky the situation dance of the
Speaker 1: kalmar Get. It's two thousand ten, and Folker's letting me
Speaker 1: tag along. If you searches for a holy grail while
Speaker 1: cocao tree that gives us chocolate. Coco's native to the Amazon,
Speaker 1: and now it's farmed all over the tropics, mostly in Africa.
Speaker 1: A few years before our trip, Focus stumbled upon an
Speaker 1: incredible variety of wild cow in Bolivia and he turned
Speaker 1: it into this mind blowing chocolate. So now there's a
Speaker 1: gold rush for these magic beans, and Volker's hope is
Speaker 1: to stay one step ahead. There's an indigenous group in
Speaker 1: the forest of the Europare. Rumor has it they have
Speaker 1: a ton of wildcata cell So the plan is fly in,
Speaker 1: find a landing strip, take a dugout canoe to the
Speaker 1: Eurokari village, strike a deal below us. The jungle looks otherworldly.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is steaming, miss rising to form these
Speaker 1: immense thunderheads, and the thunderheads are dropping ropes black rain
Speaker 1: back to the forest. At one point we punched through
Speaker 1: a storm and water comes spitting through the vents of
Speaker 1: the plain. Shoot a glance at the pilot, like what,
Speaker 1: but he just waves me off. It's getting hard to
Speaker 1: tell what to worry about and what not to worry about.
Speaker 1: For that, all I can do is counting vulgar because
Speaker 1: he's been navigating the Amazon for twenty years. This part
Speaker 1: of Olivia is all rainforests and grasslands. It's also a
Speaker 1: major cocaine flyaway. The rivers are dotted with these homemade
Speaker 1: landing strips and small planes swoop in, pick up the drugs,
Speaker 1: and head for Brazil. Those landing strips are super convenient
Speaker 1: if you need to get into the deepoots quickly, which
Speaker 1: we do, but it's also super dangerous. Hundreds of people
Speaker 1: get shot in the Amazon every year for all sorts
Speaker 1: of reasons. Just being an environmental activist is enough, But
Speaker 1: stumbling upon a cocaine lab that's one of the surest
Speaker 1: ways to make it happen. But when you need a
Speaker 1: landing strip, you need a landing strip. The problem is
Speaker 1: that it's the rainy season and everything is fly it.
Speaker 1: The rivers have risen like thirty feet, The trees are
Speaker 1: in standing water, the ground is gleaming like a mirror.
Speaker 1: At last, there's a strip near a small cabin on
Speaker 1: the river, but it's really short. The rain swamped part
Speaker 1: of the landing strip, and the landing strip was homemade. No,
Speaker 1: it's not official landing strip. The pilot swoops down to
Speaker 1: get a closer look, and he doesn't like what he sees,
Speaker 1: and neither do I. He pulls back up and circles
Speaker 1: the area looking for alternatives, but there are no alternatives.
Speaker 1: The pilot keeps circling back to that original strip. He's
Speaker 1: trying to psych himself up, and for all I know,
Speaker 1: we're running well on fuel. Get vulcars still sitting there
Speaker 1: like it's another day in the park. And that is
Speaker 1: making me more nervous because I can tell that his
Speaker 1: appetite for risk is a lot higher than mine. And
Speaker 1: then the pilot banks the plane towards that strip. For second,
Speaker 1: I think, well, this must be another reconnaissance run, because
Speaker 1: nobody would. Oh no, he's going for it right now.
Speaker 1: The ground is rising in front of us fast. So
Speaker 1: I grabbed the handle above the door, tucked my head
Speaker 1: and brace and we hit actually hits the wrong word.
Speaker 1: It's super soft thanks to all that spongey ground. So
Speaker 1: we break hard and slammed the stop spraying puddles, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, holy sh it, we made it. So I
Speaker 1: grabbed my back and hop out. Vulkers behind me and
Speaker 1: it's like, hello Amazon. It's a cathedral. When you're on
Speaker 1: the ground, there's these massive trees that are dripping thick fines.
Speaker 1: There's flocks of actual parrots screeching through the canopy. And
Speaker 1: then from that little cabin up ahead, four guys emerge
Speaker 1: and they're holding rifles. There were like one guy coming,
Speaker 1: and then the second, and the third and the fourth,
Speaker 1: and then they were surrounding us. And I was looking
Speaker 1: at the pilot and he said, I have to leave
Speaker 1: because of the weather, and you know, nobody said anything,
Speaker 1: and so he turned around this plane and off he
Speaker 1: off he went, and then I realized, oh, we are
Speaker 1: in the middle of some people we don't know. I
Speaker 1: was nervous. I am trying not to make any fast
Speaker 1: moves because these guys are twitchy. Everything they say confirmed
Speaker 1: my worst fears. They're watching the place for their boss,
Speaker 1: who's a Columbian man, and we've just landed on his
Speaker 1: private runway without permission. And I've been in the Amazon
Speaker 1: for all five minutes, and I'm starting to wonder if
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not really cut out of this cacao anything.
Speaker 1: And all I can do is look over vulgar and think,
Speaker 1: I hope the hell you got this from Kaleidostoe and
Speaker 1: I podcasts. This is Obsessions Wild Chocolate. I'm Rowan Jacobson,
Speaker 1: Chapter one, The Hunt. So one thing I should explain
Speaker 1: is that I'm a food writer, but not a normal
Speaker 1: food writer. I don't write cookbooks or restaurant reviews. Instead,
Speaker 1: the thing I do is harder to explain. This is
Speaker 1: All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. Listen
Speaker 1: to how Rowan Jacobson describes a temperamental mollusk. I kind
Speaker 1: of think of these as the Sean pen of oysters
Speaker 1: like very intense and memorable, but you wouldn't want have
Speaker 1: him every day. Rowan Jacobson talks about oysters the way
Speaker 1: a lover might recall his favorite conquests. You have to
Speaker 1: think about the after globe. See what I mean. My
Speaker 1: call is to bring amazing ingredients to life, to use
Speaker 1: intense sensory experience as a wormhole to jump into a
Speaker 1: universe of exotic landscapes, diverse traditions, revelations, and obsessions. Back
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, I was writing a book about
Speaker 1: the world's best ingredients, and I was working on chapter
Speaker 1: about chocolate. Chocolate, of course, is on anybody's shortlist of
Speaker 1: great ingredients, as it should be. It's our most complex food.
Speaker 1: It has more than six hundred different flavor components. If
Speaker 1: you think of flavor as a kind of language away
Speaker 1: the world communicates to us through our senses, then chocolate
Speaker 1: is like epic poetry. It speaks in these lush, rhythmic
Speaker 1: phrases that sweep over us and sometimes sweep us away
Speaker 1: at good chocolate does. But the stuff you find in
Speaker 1: your typical candy aisle that's more brain fart than epic poem.
Speaker 1: There's just not that much chocolate in your average chocolate bar,
Speaker 1: and the quality is nothing special. Just like great wine
Speaker 1: requires great grapes, epic chocolate requires the very best cacalbeans,
Speaker 1: and those are really hard to find. For decades, nobody
Speaker 1: outside the Amazon was really looking for them. Now that's change.
Speaker 1: A new wave of extreme chocolate makers is seeking out
Speaker 1: the best of the best and using it to make
Speaker 1: the most intensely delicious chocolate that has ever been made,
Speaker 1: chocolate that is so different from what has come before
Speaker 1: that the experience is like some sort of drug. In
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, I was tasting my way through these
Speaker 1: trippy bars from my book, and it kept coming across
Speaker 1: rumors about the trippiest of them all. Supposedly it was
Speaker 1: the first bar in history that wasn't made out of
Speaker 1: farm to cacab This one was all wild, sourced from
Speaker 1: the Amazon rainforest itself, and it tasted like nothing that
Speaker 1: had come before. Well. Summoning all of my journalistic skills,
Speaker 1: I managed to track down a bar. I had to
Speaker 1: order it from Switzerland and it cost me twenty six
Speaker 1: bucks was shipping, but a week later the FedEx truck
Speaker 1: dropped the hot little box on my porch and I
Speaker 1: tore it open. The bars cloaked in snazzy Swiss wrapping,
Speaker 1: slid off the sleeve and part of the gold foil
Speaker 1: to reveal a thin plank of chocolate embossed with a feather.
Speaker 1: I snapped off a shard, placed it on my tongue,
Speaker 1: and the bottom fell out of the room. It melted
Speaker 1: like silk, not a trace of bitterness. There's these notes
Speaker 1: of dried fruit and pipe smoke dancing through my sinuses.
Speaker 1: It was like finding an old chest in your grandparents
Speaker 1: attic and sticking your nose inside and breathing in the centuries.
Speaker 1: It was delicious, for sure, but that was almost beside
Speaker 1: the point for something else going on, something metaphysical. I
Speaker 1: don't really have the word for it. All I can
Speaker 1: say is, compared to all the chocolate I've known, this
Speaker 1: one tasted real. I wanted more of this wild chocolate,
Speaker 1: this wild experience, and I resolved to find someone who
Speaker 1: could lead me into this thicket of flavors. What I
Speaker 1: couldn't have known at the time was that seeking the
Speaker 1: answers to those questions was going to lead me into
Speaker 1: the rainforest again and again in the shadowed laws, civilizations,
Speaker 1: and in the company of some extraordinary people obsessed with
Speaker 1: making god level chocolate. It was frequently going to leave
Speaker 1: me soaked, bitten, miserable, and miles from the nearest bed.
Speaker 1: It was going to expose me to chocolate's dark history
Speaker 1: of exploitation and environmental destruction. But it was also going
Speaker 1: to show me cocow's sacred side and how can we
Speaker 1: used to protect the rainforest. But on that day in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, I just wanted to know if the
Speaker 1: story was true, if this mythical wild cacao really existed.
Speaker 1: The chocolate maker said it was being supplied from Bolivia
Speaker 1: by a man named Vulgar Layman. And that's how I
Speaker 1: met the Herzog of coco hunting over Skype. Hello. Hey.
Speaker 1: When I told him that people I asked had never
Speaker 1: heard of wild cacao, he just laughed. He said, most
Speaker 1: people in the business have never even seen a cocountry,
Speaker 1: much less step foot in the rainforest. Basically, they were idiots,
Speaker 1: not close to being on his level. I go at
Speaker 1: ahead of the pank. Everybody behind me, No, still trying
Speaker 1: to catch me. Somehow not possible. I like the intensity
Speaker 1: he seemed to have swagger. He said, he was taking
Speaker 1: a trip into your car a territory in search of
Speaker 1: new sources. So why not come and see for myself
Speaker 1: what type of details you want me tool send you?
Speaker 1: Maybe the plant, the logistics. Yeah, I just want just yeah,
Speaker 1: where you want me and when? Basically, um, and then
Speaker 1: I'll run it by the podcast people who are interested.
Speaker 1: They give you money, yeah, hopefully they I'll make sure
Speaker 1: that they can cover my my flights and so on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then little money and for the steaks and beers
Speaker 1: and oh yeah, okay, yeah, I pictured that's paddling up
Speaker 1: a river, joining in wild chocolate ceremonies, rivers of molten
Speaker 1: deliciousness pouring down our chins. That was the plan anyway,
Speaker 1: Are there snakes to worry about? They are? Okay. That
Speaker 1: was age very large crocodile, which brings me back to
Speaker 1: that landing strip. We're staring at these twittery guys with guns,
Speaker 1: and I know what they're thinking. For two white dudes
Speaker 1: to drop out of an airplane in this region means
Speaker 1: one of two things. Either they think we're undercovered DA
Speaker 1: or they think we're traffickers, and either way is not good.
Speaker 1: It seems like that it was close to the weekend
Speaker 1: and they needed some money to buy food and booze.
Speaker 1: So I said myself, okay, they have a need to
Speaker 1: give money, and we have the need to get out
Speaker 1: of it. So he says, no problem with guys, what's
Speaker 1: the landing feed and the guys just look at each other,
Speaker 1: and finally one says five thousand bolivianos, which is about
Speaker 1: seven fifty bucks. And I'm thinking, oh my god, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty good deal. We've definitely got enough to swing that.
Speaker 1: And before I can get there, Bulker says, stone faced, sorry,
Speaker 1: we don't have that much. I said, look, I am myself.
Speaker 1: I'm poor. And he started looking at me and like, well,
Speaker 1: what what a story, you know? And they said, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, look, I represent a small project and and
Speaker 1: we're doing with Cacao. We're dealing with the indigenous Jura
Speaker 1: care people. I'm listening to Votres explanation and I can't
Speaker 1: tell how persuaded these guys are. Just then Vulgar pulls
Speaker 1: out five hundred bilianos, which is only seventy five bucks,
Speaker 1: and offers it up. I take a deep breath and watch,
Speaker 1: and the guy relaxes and takes the money, and then
Speaker 1: his buddies relax and suddenly the whole five changes and
Speaker 1: they invite us to sit down and have a drink.
Speaker 1: So we're making small talk. He actually want a tool,
Speaker 1: give me as a gift a book. It was a
Speaker 1: beat up John Grisham paperback someone had left behind. It
Speaker 1: was in English. So they us part and I said, no,
Speaker 1: keep it. You know, we want to travel light until
Speaker 1: use the money and think of her much and see
Speaker 1: you there you go how to win friends and influence
Speaker 1: people in the Amazon. After paying off our new friends,
Speaker 1: Bolker and I make our way down to the river.
Speaker 1: Two guys are waiting for us in a long, skinny
Speaker 1: dugout with an outboard on the back. Aurelio has a
Speaker 1: white gambler hat, a mustache, a cigarette, and a rifle.
Speaker 1: Talked into the bow of the canoe full cowboy vibe.
Speaker 1: In the back of the boat, the pilot Dante, a
Speaker 1: big guy with the scruppy beard, a huge wad of
Speaker 1: coca leaves stuffed into his bulgian cheek. We threw our
Speaker 1: stuff into the middle of the canoe and wedge ourselves
Speaker 1: in between, trying not to capsize the thing. All right,
Speaker 1: here goes nothing. Any last words before we launched the voyage,
Speaker 1: I don't never have last words. This is not the
Speaker 1: end at all. I want to taste of some of
Speaker 1: this god level chocolate. We got you covered. Kaliscope has
Speaker 1: joined forces with Louise Abram and Stetler Chocolate to make
Speaker 1: a special box to go along with its very podcast
Speaker 1: taste what has driven many to near madness at www
Speaker 1: dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com. Chocolate is a Mayan
Speaker 1: thing a thousand years before Europeans crossed the Atlantic, the
Speaker 1: Maya we're already growing cacao all over Central America and
Speaker 1: using it for rituals and ceremonies. Maya people are the
Speaker 1: forced people. Known people used it, concurvated, domesticated it and
Speaker 1: for us. But it's a gift from the heavens above.
Speaker 1: That's Julio's the key. He's a man and elder. I
Speaker 1: met and belieze. Julia has a chocolate company, but he
Speaker 1: also does demonstrations of traditional Mayan chocolate making. There's a
Speaker 1: way of teaching others what cacow means to his people.
Speaker 1: We stood in his dashed hut just off the highway
Speaker 1: while trucks rattled by as he toasted cacow beans over
Speaker 1: a wooden fire, then ground them between two stones to
Speaker 1: form a paste. Then he mixed the paste with hot
Speaker 1: water and whipped the drink into a froth. This is
Speaker 1: how his mother did it before him, and her mother
Speaker 1: before her, sharing the drink and burning the beans on
Speaker 1: an altar is believed. This is our belief that the
Speaker 1: prayers that we're seeing, the tanks that we're saying, to
Speaker 1: the jungle, to the rainforest, to the wind, to the breeze,
Speaker 1: to the mountains, to the soil, our ancestors would feel
Speaker 1: it would take it. And this is what we strongly
Speaker 1: believe the connection is with between the upper world on
Speaker 1: the the lower world where we are to it. So
Speaker 1: for usc is essentially it's food. He's like talking about
Speaker 1: food being a religious experience, but traditionally the creation and
Speaker 1: consumption of chocolate is just that. Needless to say, that
Speaker 1: was lost on the first European to encounter cacao, a
Speaker 1: guy named Christopher Columbus. It was August and Columbus was
Speaker 1: on his fourth and final voyage to the New World.
Speaker 1: He'd blown it on the whole passage to India. Thing
Speaker 1: he hadn't found any big stores of gold, his ships
Speaker 1: were in tatters, and after his last voyage he'd been
Speaker 1: carted back to Spain and shackles. He needed a big score,
Speaker 1: and miraculously, off the coast of Honduras he got it.
Speaker 1: A huge mind trading canoe more than a hundred feet long,
Speaker 1: laden with cloth axes, war clubs, corn beer, and what
Speaker 1: looked like almonds. Columbus hauled them eye on their cargo
Speaker 1: on board, and when some of those alm and spilled,
Speaker 1: the mind merchants freaked. Glumbus's son wrote that they scrambled
Speaker 1: for them as if their eyeballs had fallen out. Obviously,
Speaker 1: to the Maya, these weird almonds were precious. If you're
Speaker 1: a master explorer desperate defined treasure, wouldn't you go ashore
Speaker 1: and see if there's any more of these things lying around?
Speaker 1: If Colemus had, he'd have learned that the eyeballs rolling
Speaker 1: around his deck were cacao beans, and they were the
Speaker 1: lifeblood of Mayan culture. Everybody had a few trees in
Speaker 1: their backyard, some people had whole forests. No wedding or
Speaker 1: holiday was complete without a round of hot chocolate whipped
Speaker 1: into a froth with a nice head of phone. The
Speaker 1: dried beans could last for years, so they were the
Speaker 1: coin of the realm. According to records from the fift hundreds,
Speaker 1: one coco bean to get you it to molly, three
Speaker 1: an avocado for a salamander, and eight a rabbit or
Speaker 1: a prostitute. Cocaw is still used as currency in some places.
Speaker 1: Julio Saki says that when he was growing up and
Speaker 1: believe in the nineteen seventies, cacao was cash. My mom
Speaker 1: mused to send me as she heard that somebody just
Speaker 1: got a fresh neat coming in from the jungle. She
Speaker 1: would send me over to treat to buy that meat,
Speaker 1: essentially with that half kilo of coca beats, and the
Speaker 1: owner never refuses it. They would say, oh wow, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: here's here's your meat. The point is cocao was the
Speaker 1: sacred heart of Mine society and Aztec society. The Aztec
Speaker 1: emperor Montezuma was known to drink fifty cups of chocolate
Speaker 1: over the course of a single meal. When Spanish conquistadors
Speaker 1: rated his treasure vaults, they found nine hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: million cacal beans sitting inside. It was the Fort Knox
Speaker 1: of the New World, and Spanish quickly claimed it as
Speaker 1: their own. Soon they'd taken over the whole cocao operation.
Speaker 1: But they never learned to love chocolate until they began
Speaker 1: pouring sugar into it. Then they introduced it to Europe
Speaker 1: and the craze began. Chocolate houses sprang up from England
Speaker 1: to Austria. They were basically the Starbucks of their day,
Speaker 1: and Spanish controlled the entire trade. For all the talk
Speaker 1: of Elderado, the real treasure they found was chocolate. For
Speaker 1: a while, all the cocoa in the New World came
Speaker 1: from traditional varieties that had great flavor, But as demand exploded,
Speaker 1: supplies got tight. The old orchards just couldn't keep up.
Speaker 1: So the chocolate industry planted cacou all over the tropics,
Speaker 1: especially in West Africa, where labor was unfortunately cheapest of all,
Speaker 1: and the industry planted whatever hybrid varieties produced the highest yields,
Speaker 1: no matter how they tasted, because back then nobody paid
Speaker 1: extra for flavor. A bean was a bean. There's a
Speaker 1: saying in West Africa, Mark Christian, one of the world's
Speaker 1: leading chocolate critics, there's no cemetery for cocoa beans, which
Speaker 1: means it doesn't matter every single one of them. We
Speaker 1: sell them because no matter how good are bad they are,
Speaker 1: Nestlee's or whoever, you know, he's gonna get their hands
Speaker 1: on them. And then they'll standardize the flavor by smearing
Speaker 1: it with big vanilla. Maybe it'll go into milk chocolate
Speaker 1: or whatnot. You know, there are lots of ways to
Speaker 1: mask it, and they're fine with it because it's about volume, volume,
Speaker 1: but not taste. And that's still true. But now a
Speaker 1: few Indiana Jones style cocao hunters like Vulgar are trying
Speaker 1: something new. They're raising money for expeditions and scouring the
Speaker 1: jungles for cacao with real flavor, flavors that have been
Speaker 1: lost for centuries, or in some cases, new flavors no
Speaker 1: one has ever tasted before. The funny thing is this
Speaker 1: new way of thinking about chocolate. It's really just the
Speaker 1: old way of thinking about chocolate. It always was the
Speaker 1: gold of the forest. We finally got to this city
Speaker 1: called Boca, which is mouth of Acre, the Acre River,
Speaker 1: and it was dry season. It was August. That's Louisa Abram,
Speaker 1: the new rock star of wild Chocolate at twenty two,
Speaker 1: fresh out of culinary school, she launched her chocolate company
Speaker 1: and began looking around for source of fantastic cacaw. She
Speaker 1: heard a rumor that a tiny co op deep in
Speaker 1: the Amazon had a stash to sell, so she charted
Speaker 1: a skinny boat and made the trip. The river was
Speaker 1: so dangerous, Oh my gosh, like I've never saw so
Speaker 1: many trunks and so many like obstacles. Rivers in Amazonia
Speaker 1: are filled with buried tree trunks just waiting to impale
Speaker 1: your boat. It can be treacherous. But they made it
Speaker 1: through the big river and then they turned down a
Speaker 1: tiny stream just wide enough for the boat, and they
Speaker 1: followed it wherever. It was six hours in the little
Speaker 1: like stream. Suddenly you see like this big ass bridge.
Speaker 1: Humanous if you would, and you're like, something's here. It
Speaker 1: was a town of eight people in the middle of
Speaker 1: the jungle. It was called Mapia, which means heaven, and
Speaker 1: it was a very particular sort of heaven. We had
Speaker 1: no idea when we got there. They build the co
Speaker 1: op to sustain the Santo Daimi Community Center. DAM is
Speaker 1: a religion based in part on ayahuasca, a drink brewed
Speaker 1: from psychedelic plants that triggers visions and euphoria. It's part Catholicism,
Speaker 1: part paganism. It's practitioners drink ayahuasca in group rituals that
Speaker 1: involve chanting and dancing that goes on all night long.
Speaker 1: They believe the ayahuasca, or dim as they call it,
Speaker 1: brings the spirit of the divine into them. The farest
Speaker 1: around Mapia were filled countries, and the beans were one
Speaker 1: of the community's main sources of income. It was a
Speaker 1: perfect way to make a little money while leaving the forest. Intact,
Speaker 1: Louis loved the idea of working with wild cacao and
Speaker 1: using it as a way to support the dame A
Speaker 1: community and to protect their sacred forest. She began making
Speaker 1: regular visits to the community, slowly learning their ways and
Speaker 1: winning their trust, but she knew that to really be
Speaker 1: in sync with them, she needed to experience the ayahuasca.
Speaker 1: I think for them, it was important that I could
Speaker 1: see them outside of being a labor force. I could
Speaker 1: see them as people. I knew that I was going
Speaker 1: to keep on going there, so I said to one
Speaker 1: of the leaders in the community, can I be a
Speaker 1: part of the ceremony tonight. He was so surprised that
Speaker 1: he invited the whole community, eighty people. And I was afraid,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. I was a little bit afraid,
Speaker 1: like if I take this, it's gonna mess up my
Speaker 1: mind for my whole entire life. That night, the people
Speaker 1: gathered in the church with guitars and drums. The church
Speaker 1: is not a church that like we know, with like
Speaker 1: four walls, nothing like that. It's open, so you can
Speaker 1: here the environment. As the night sounds of the forest
Speaker 1: filtered into the church. Everyone lined up to receive communions.
Speaker 1: It's a thick drink, almost like a smoothie, and you
Speaker 1: take it like a shot, and it tastes earthy, bitter.
Speaker 1: At first, you don't feel nothing, and then it started.
Speaker 1: I started really feeling different, feeling lighter, feeling happier, feeling
Speaker 1: more aware of the sounds of the forest. There was
Speaker 1: this frog making this sound, everyone singing, moving to rhythms,
Speaker 1: them dancing, and closing my eyes and feeling that union
Speaker 1: with all the women singing and the men playing the guitar.
Speaker 1: The noises start becoming a sea of colors, different colors,
Speaker 1: and like a brushstroke of like purple, pink, and then
Speaker 1: green neon and then light bloom. It's just synestisia, the
Speaker 1: waves of color coming towards to me and going backwards.
Speaker 1: And then fourty minutes later we take another shot. I
Speaker 1: took three shots. Hour after hour. They keep saying, keep dancing,
Speaker 1: and the dime is rising within them. It starts becoming
Speaker 1: like more fluid, and you just like feel euphoria. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know that your energy is
Speaker 1: resignating towards the person that it's by your side, and
Speaker 1: the same with that person, and you're dancing the whole time,
Speaker 1: and you don't feel higher. And then the dima is everywhere,
Speaker 1: flowing through everyone and everything, emerging, the people and the
Speaker 1: animals and the vines and the trees into one unified being.
Speaker 1: Everyone surrounding you, and the forest they were one. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: she lay in her hammock, floating in the darkness, and
Speaker 1: she knew she had been changed forever. Here's a confession.
Speaker 1: There are times on this journey when I thought, hold on, now,
Speaker 1: what are you people doing? What am I doing? Usually
Speaker 1: these moments come when I'm hanging in some hammock in
Speaker 1: the jungle, nursing my bug bites and dreaming about a
Speaker 1: shower or facing down another dinner of dry fried paranya.
Speaker 1: Let's face it, this is a crazy way to make
Speaker 1: a living loan sharks on one end, jaguars on the other,
Speaker 1: and even if you do everything right, you could better
Speaker 1: money waiting tables. Sometimes I think a cow is edible gold,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I think it's fool's gold. But you know what,
Speaker 1: people keep committing their lives to this and it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with money. So what's the draw. Well,
Speaker 1: that's an easy one. I remember when I first chocolate
Speaker 1: in my mouth, it was like it was like a drug.
Speaker 1: They were like, oh my god, Like I was just
Speaker 1: so amazed. This was like, you know, a classic symphony orchestra.
Speaker 1: When it's really good chocolate like that, the world screeches
Speaker 1: to a halt and the heavens let loose. Kind of
Speaker 1: crazy that a bunch of crust seeds can do that
Speaker 1: to you. But like I said, chocolate is epic poetry.
Speaker 1: It gives voice to the rainforest in the language your
Speaker 1: senses understand perfectly. I never had a chance to experience
Speaker 1: the sense of dimes eremony like Louisa, But the more
Speaker 1: time I spent chasing chocolate in the Amazon, the more
Speaker 1: I realized I didn't have to ayahuasca. It was all
Speaker 1: part of the well spring, all part of the library
Speaker 1: of transcendence that this most endangered and mysterious of places
Speaker 1: still holds. So we took off and we were just
Speaker 1: floating on on the river of the river was quite
Speaker 1: high and calm. The turtles normally sit on the on
Speaker 1: the river bank, on a on a on a little
Speaker 1: trunk and jump in the water when you passed. I'm
Speaker 1: in a dugout canoe with Vulkers sitting behind me. We're
Speaker 1: headed to the Urquari village, three hours downstream. It's our fixer,
Speaker 1: Ralio's recommendation. He's been selling the vulcan for a while,
Speaker 1: and when Volker said he was looking for new supplies,
Speaker 1: Ralio suggested we meet with the uk Arre. We glide
Speaker 1: over the brown water, leaving the heat and bugs behind
Speaker 1: at least for the moment. Pink river dolphins surface around
Speaker 1: us with little gasps. At last, I have time to breathe.
Speaker 1: Around a bend, we come upon a surreal scene. There
Speaker 1: were people going with canoes into the forest which were
Speaker 1: flooded and tried to get the pods from the trees,
Speaker 1: and so I I saw it, and I saw, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is a very unusual situation. We pick a couple
Speaker 1: of pods ourselves and crack them open on the side
Speaker 1: of the boat and scoop the white pulp into our mouths.
Speaker 1: It's delicious, sweet and sour, like lemonade. We spit out
Speaker 1: the raw seeds, which won't taste like chocolate until they
Speaker 1: get fermented and roasted. Ulcer's eyes are shining as we
Speaker 1: passed more boats and trees in the flooded forests, and
Speaker 1: I start to understand why he's here chasing chocolate, Why
Speaker 1: anyone would take on such an impossible challenge, Because this
Speaker 1: place is unlike anywhere else, and he wants to protect it.
Speaker 1: And in wild cocao, he thinks he's found away. Dante
Speaker 1: hands me his coca pouch and I stuff a fistful
Speaker 1: leaves into my cheek and has the alkaloids trickle into
Speaker 1: my bloodstream and feel like God just bumped up the
Speaker 1: pop on my monitor. Thunder rolls over the jungle. Howler
Speaker 1: monkeys roar in response, and as we melt into the forest,
Speaker 1: I wedged myself into the bow of the boat next
Speaker 1: to Aurelio's rifle and lean back against the curved wood.
Speaker 1: Somewhere around the next bend lies revelation, the essence of
Speaker 1: the Amazon. And I'm not wrong, but be careful what
Speaker 1: you ask for. So the rain has just been pounding
Speaker 1: all my long, and the river is now as the
Speaker 1: rivers reclaimed all the land like, there's just water everywhere.
Speaker 1: There's no dry land to little walk on. We're supposed
Speaker 1: to head back up river and very just gonna be
Speaker 1: full of massive trees tearing down stream. Um and said,
Speaker 1: moving so fast. I'm not sure the boat's gonna be
Speaker 1: able to do it, but we'll see. This season on Obsessions,
Speaker 1: wild chocolate, chocolate sort of forms this vortex that sucks
Speaker 1: you in. I had no idea what this is going
Speaker 1: to be, and you keep getting deeper deeper into it.
Speaker 1: We're lost. What should we do. I can conquer chocolate
Speaker 1: like I can be the Queen of wild chocolate. There's
Speaker 1: always this risk of complete boss. It wasn't always money, yeah,
Speaker 1: but now there's no more money. Basically this like disgruntled
Speaker 1: guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes.
Speaker 1: We've heard all sorts of things that you know, somebody
Speaker 1: got shot over this, and I don't like guns, but
Speaker 1: I mean you saw the stacks of cash in our office.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think all this for a damn bar of chocolate.
Speaker 1: Wild Chocolate is a Kaleidoscope production with I Heart Podcasts,
Speaker 1: hosted and reported by me Ron Jacobson and produced by
Speaker 1: Shane mckeit at Nice Marmot Media. Edited by Kate Osborne
Speaker 1: and Gesh how To Goudar, sound design and mixing by Soundboard.
Speaker 1: Original music composition by Spencer Stevenson, a k a Botany
Speaker 1: production help from Bahi ni Short from My Heart Are.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Katrina Norval and Nikki Etart. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Laura Mayor Costas, Lenos Oswallas and Aaron Kaufman, Will Pearson,
Speaker 1: conel Burne, Bob Pittman, Daria Daniel and the team at
Speaker 1: Statler who are helping us make a very special chocolate
Speaker 1: of our own. That's right, We're working with Louisa and
Speaker 1: others to protect the rainforest and make delicious Amazonian chocolate.
Speaker 1: Visit www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com to taste
Speaker 1: it for yourself. That's www. Dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear more of this type
Speaker 1: of content. Nothing is more important to the creators here
Speaker 1: at Kaleidoscope than subscribers, ratings, and reviews. Please spread the
Speaker 1: love wherever you listen.