Speaker 1: How did you sleep? First nights are always at the heart.
Speaker 1: That's good, that's a truthful answer. It's an early February
Speaker 1: morning on the banks of the Jervois River in Brazil,
Speaker 1: not far from the Peruvian border. I'm with Louise Abram
Speaker 1: and her dad Andre, and we're here on a simple mission, really,
Speaker 1: just try and save the most fragrant chocolate on earth
Speaker 1: from total extinction. We just arrived last night, after a
Speaker 1: full day of travel by planes and small boat, and
Speaker 1: after a rough night in a basic hut. We're moving
Speaker 1: a little slow as we take stock of the situation.
Speaker 1: The story of this mission goes back a few years.
Speaker 1: Luisa had just dialed in her technique for producing great
Speaker 1: chocolate from wild cacao beans when a nonprofit called s
Speaker 1: O s Amazonia that works to protect the Amazon It's
Speaker 1: people came to her with a plea. They had just
Speaker 1: found cocao growing along the banks of the Jeroa River
Speaker 1: in a pristine area where the people had almost no
Speaker 1: source of income. Would she considered working with them? No
Speaker 1: one had ever tried making chocolate with this cacao, so
Speaker 1: of course she couldn't resist. She flew north clear across
Speaker 1: Brazil and checked out the trees. The pods were tiny
Speaker 1: with deep ridges, the seeds inside were really smaller, and
Speaker 1: when I saw it, I was just like, I think
Speaker 1: we found something different here. Because it was just so unique.
Speaker 1: They collected samples and rushed them off to the U.
Speaker 1: S d A for analysis, and scientists couldn't get back
Speaker 1: to them fast enough. They were like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: a new thing, you know, like you guys really found different,
Speaker 1: not just a new thing, but a wildly new thing
Speaker 1: in geography, genetics, and flavor was on a different plane
Speaker 1: it every other cacao here in this forgotten tributary of
Speaker 1: the Amazon, they had struck gold. It was just so
Speaker 1: mesmerized by it. I wanted to show every word this
Speaker 1: Judaha is something else. It's it's a floral bouquet. I
Speaker 1: don't love it. One of the first to get his
Speaker 1: taste foods on it was chocolate critic Mark Christian. It
Speaker 1: was sort of like, yeah, bring this on, okay, Now
Speaker 1: we're finding things, you know, We're find stuff. This is
Speaker 1: what it's about, you know, rediscovery. And if Mark was entranced,
Speaker 1: Matt Capuda was downright obsessed. It almost had this note
Speaker 1: of perfume, things like annis sassafras, like almost jasmine blossom,
Speaker 1: but also like tropical fruit notes like in one year,
Speaker 1: I got samples from over four chocolate companies and I
Speaker 1: have to evaluate them. You get kind of jaded. And
Speaker 1: then to taste something like Louisa's judua that is just
Speaker 1: completely singular, and it was just it was intoxicating in
Speaker 1: a way. But the Jiuis River was so remote and
Speaker 1: there were so few people to do the work that
Speaker 1: was almost impossible to get the beans picked, fermented, and shipped.
Speaker 1: But fortunately for Louisa, Matt Caputo became a champion of
Speaker 1: the bar, buying the meager supply and building a cult
Speaker 1: following for it in the US as a librarian of
Speaker 1: disappearing in exotic flavors. This was exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: masterpiece Matt wanted to keep alive. Then came epic flooding
Speaker 1: on the Jeruis River. The people were just scrambling for
Speaker 1: survival and there was no way to harvest. And as
Speaker 1: if that wasn't bad enough, then COVID struck and the
Speaker 1: specialty chocolate market tanked. Louise's dream was now on life support.
Speaker 1: The family had to make a decision, and in pat
Speaker 1: received a long email from Louise's father Andre. Their chocolate
Speaker 1: sales were taking a beating. They were leveraged with some
Speaker 1: loans and had big time financial struggles fighting for survival.
Speaker 1: They had to drop any project that was losing money,
Speaker 1: and that meant they had to give up on Gera.
Speaker 1: It was just too expensive, too hard, and so they
Speaker 1: had to let their biggest cheerleader down. My heart just
Speaker 1: sank and I felt like I got punched in the gut.
Speaker 1: They felt like, these goals that we have, no matter
Speaker 1: how hard we push, we there's just too many pressures
Speaker 1: that we can't control, and we're doomed to fail. What
Speaker 1: are we going to do? We're just a deli insult
Speaker 1: like we're going to change the whole food system, you know.
Speaker 1: It feels like we're tilting at windmills. Louise's little venture
Speaker 1: seemed destined to fail, and yet here I am two
Speaker 1: years later, in the heart of the Amazon, watching her
Speaker 1: take the fight to those windmills. What are your other
Speaker 1: plans for the day, Well, I have a cup of
Speaker 1: coffee from the little porch of our hut. Would in
Speaker 1: our coffee and peer out at the world before us
Speaker 1: a sliver of ground between the river and the swamp.
Speaker 1: Pigs and chickens weave between banana trees and wander under huts,
Speaker 1: harassed by an old dog a few yards away. The
Speaker 1: river swollen with storm water, a milk chocolate monster churning
Speaker 1: with gigantic trees and root balls and drising every day,
Speaker 1: and that means we only have a few days to
Speaker 1: pull off a miracle. Louisa is here to show face
Speaker 1: established connections, teach a fermentation workshop, and convince the homesteaders
Speaker 1: that wild Coco could be a great part of their future,
Speaker 1: because there's another version of their future that's full of
Speaker 1: chainsaws and cattle ranches, which is true throughout the Amazon,
Speaker 1: and Louisa is trying to do her small part to
Speaker 1: head that off. The good news there are four two
Speaker 1: freshly picked pods waiting for us to use in the workshop.
Speaker 1: The family spent all day picking yesterday, so they're at
Speaker 1: least curious. But the bad news is that we have
Speaker 1: to get the beans for menut and dry before water
Speaker 1: swamps everything. It's going to be a high wire act
Speaker 1: in this part of the Amazon. The accommodations tend to
Speaker 1: be spartan, We're staying at the homestead of a guy
Speaker 1: named Zay. He's a strong, wiry guy in his forties
Speaker 1: and shorts and bare feet like most rebering Yo's, as
Speaker 1: river dwellers are called in Brazil. He has no electricity
Speaker 1: or out house. The only drinking water is whatever gets
Speaker 1: caught off the roof, and the only bathing is to
Speaker 1: stand in the muddy swamp behind the lot and scoop
Speaker 1: pots some water over your head. Say warns us that
Speaker 1: anytime you're standing in the swamp, watch out for portaque
Speaker 1: giant electric eels. That's not encouraging, but he also says
Speaker 1: that when the moon is full, a goddess rises out
Speaker 1: of the river and the river dolphins dance around her.
Speaker 1: So I chalk it up to Amazonian superstitions until Okay,
Speaker 1: they apparently just caught an electric eel. So he's taking
Speaker 1: me down to the river. Let stick look at it.
Speaker 1: I'd actually heard that there were electric geels in the Amazon,
Speaker 1: but for some reason in my head I pictured tiny
Speaker 1: things like maybe a foot long. Instead. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's a river minster. I am so not swimming in
Speaker 1: the river anymore. Holy Moly, he's got a tape measure out.
Speaker 1: It's like a seven foot sandworm, as thick as a
Speaker 1: ship cable, a huge mountain. Andre and Louisa are right
Speaker 1: on my heels. This is so huge. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen one like this? This is huge? Ter forget the
Speaker 1: piranhas the crocodiles piannacondas, because eight points to the beast
Speaker 1: and says this is the most dangerous animal in the
Speaker 1: small It's even shocked by the when did it feel
Speaker 1: like costin Greek? Yeah, you can make a good but
Speaker 1: then the white point. Yeah, if you don't take a
Speaker 1: person out of the water, the poor k going on
Speaker 1: top over the chest and specificly chest, Gonna give you
Speaker 1: another another electric chocolate? Really finished? God? Yeah? So apparently
Speaker 1: these eels like to pile on your chest like linebackers
Speaker 1: electric linebackers, and they like to hunt in packs. So
Speaker 1: whatever we managed to get accomplished this week, it's not
Speaker 1: going to include bathing from Kaleidoscope and I Hard podcasts.
Speaker 1: This is Obsessions wild Chocolate. I'm rowing Jake's chapter six,
Speaker 1: The Gospel Chocolate. One by one, we hear the pucka
Speaker 1: pucka of tiny outboards approaching, and soon we're joined by
Speaker 1: about a dozen reburying yves. Louisa is psyched. She and
Speaker 1: Andre sent money in advance to pay for harvesting and
Speaker 1: for the construction of a new fermentation shed. The reburying
Speaker 1: yeves have been living off the grid for generations. Say
Speaker 1: his parents came here from eastern Brazil during one of
Speaker 1: the rubber booms, tapping wild rubber trees for the latex sap.
Speaker 1: Once the rubber busts followed, they stayed living off the land.
Speaker 1: They grow their own food, build their own shacks, and
Speaker 1: make a little cash by fishing and gathering murumuru, a
Speaker 1: local palm nut that's rich in kisomnic oils. They like
Speaker 1: to keep things Simplecao would be a lot more responsibility
Speaker 1: with the fermenting and drying, and so far they're not
Speaker 1: convinced it's worth the effort. Yes, they picked and delivered
Speaker 1: these pods yesterday, and yes a few have shown up
Speaker 1: for the workshop to meet Louisa, but they're skeptical. And
Speaker 1: let's be honest, there's one real reason why these families
Speaker 1: that put their daily lives on hold, why they spent
Speaker 1: the day before slogging through the wet jungle picking pods.
Speaker 1: Why there's a brand new shed in the middle of
Speaker 1: Day's compound, piled with little golden footballs, and that reason
Speaker 1: is cash in. When floods and COVID forced everyone to
Speaker 1: pull back, Louisa and Andre took a different approach. We
Speaker 1: almost gave up, almost, But then Matt was the one
Speaker 1: that was like, no, you can't totalize. Just too good,
Speaker 1: it's just just special, Like I'm just going to help you, guys,
Speaker 1: just please don't give up. So the whole reason that
Speaker 1: we kept on coming back, it was because of him.
Speaker 1: Yes we're here. Because Matt Capooda fell so deeply in
Speaker 1: love with Louise's Gerwabar that they couldn't let it go.
Speaker 1: It was my favorite bar. And I thought to myself, like,
Speaker 1: you know what, what if we prepaid them for the
Speaker 1: next harvest? Now it was a crazy suggestion. Even if
Speaker 1: the cash came through, the timeline was against them, and
Speaker 1: Andrea is like, what are you talking about? It will
Speaker 1: take like two years for you to get chocolate. Just
Speaker 1: to be clear, the number of times that a retailer
Speaker 1: offers to prepay a chocolate maker two years in advance
Speaker 1: is uh, let me see here. Uh. Never. Usually producers
Speaker 1: have to chase retailers for months to get paid. It
Speaker 1: was the kind of risk sharing Vulker Lahman it soft
Speaker 1: for years and never found it was such a crazy offer.
Speaker 1: Andre didn't know what to think. He just kind of
Speaker 1: dismissed it, like, that's not a possibility. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, what if we were patient? What would it take?
Speaker 1: And he was. He basically came back with like, well,
Speaker 1: it would take seven thousand dollars. And I said to myself, like, well,
Speaker 1: Carpudos isn't that big of a company. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, seven thousand dollars to say, one of the
Speaker 1: world's great foods and MCDA, Amazon more resilient. That just
Speaker 1: couldn't get the idea out of his head. And I
Speaker 1: was definitely did some soul searching as to whether it
Speaker 1: was a good idea to send, you know, a good
Speaker 1: chunk of money out the door. And I but I
Speaker 1: talked to my wife about it and said, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's at these times when you really see what
Speaker 1: you stand for. We love these people, we believe in
Speaker 1: our mission, and we had an opportunity and if we
Speaker 1: didn't take it, even if it was going to be
Speaker 1: a loss, if we didn't take it, then we're we
Speaker 1: don't practice what we preach. Matt also did something else
Speaker 1: you won't find in your business textbook. He said, I
Speaker 1: want you to charge to be more for every bar.
Speaker 1: That's right, raise my prices and then turn around and
Speaker 1: pay the people more. Louis and Andre crunch the numbers
Speaker 1: and decided that if they really to get there burinos
Speaker 1: on board, they were going to have to pay eight
Speaker 1: dollars for a kilo of dry coco, twice as much
Speaker 1: as any other cocaw on the planet, and five times
Speaker 1: where an African farmer gets. And with Matt's help, they
Speaker 1: actually had the opportunity to do that. So they did,
Speaker 1: and with that move, Louisa and Andre and Matt flipped
Speaker 1: Big Chocolate's playbook on its head. Instead of selling cheap
Speaker 1: chocolate to unknown customers and grinding farmers into poverty to
Speaker 1: make the numbers work, they decided to pay their partners
Speaker 1: well and count on consumers to care enough to buy it.
Speaker 1: Will that work? We got our first inklings after the break.
Speaker 1: Here's your chance to be one of those carrying consumers
Speaker 1: who is the pouring the Amazon by eating this super rare,
Speaker 1: super tasty chocolate We've teamed up with Louise Abram and
Speaker 1: Stetler Chocolate to create a special tasting box with Jerwa
Speaker 1: River Chocolate and two more of Louise's special creations. Go
Speaker 1: to www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com to order
Speaker 1: a box. Link in the show notes. Here's a fun fact.
Speaker 1: There's a tiny fly in the Amazon called a plum
Speaker 1: that everybody dreads from dawn to dust. The PM feast
Speaker 1: on all exposed body parts and raise red welts that
Speaker 1: it's like insanity itself and the worst spot in the
Speaker 1: entire Amazon for pum. Yes, that's right, the Jeri River.
Speaker 1: Even other hardcore Amazonians avoid the area because of the bugs.
Speaker 1: But here we are swarms of pam shredding our necks
Speaker 1: and ankles. As we all gather in the open sided
Speaker 1: shed for the pod breaking workshop. It still smells a
Speaker 1: fresh lumber. It's basically just a platform on stilts with
Speaker 1: a roof overhead, but in the Amazon, roofs and stilts
Speaker 1: are everything. There's a mix of men and women sitting
Speaker 1: around the mountain of cacao pods in the middle. It
Speaker 1: looks like smogs treasure pile. We grab wooden clubs and
Speaker 1: start thumping pods. As Louisa walks us through it. The
Speaker 1: pods break open with the satisfying pop, and we scooped
Speaker 1: the slimy pulp and beans into buckets. Oh. Louisa directs
Speaker 1: a lot of her teaching towards the women who have come,
Speaker 1: and during a break, I asked why, I think paid
Speaker 1: more attention. And also here in the Amazon, most of
Speaker 1: the work and most of the income comes from the men.
Speaker 1: So with this selection, we can make the how harvests
Speaker 1: more I guess, um, what's the what's the name? More inclosive.
Speaker 1: When the buckets are full, we poured the beans into
Speaker 1: hip high wooden boxes. The boxes have holes in the
Speaker 1: bottoms of the juice can drain now, and local bees
Speaker 1: have already found it. Zay, our host, built these boxes
Speaker 1: to Louise's exact specifications. But he's eyeing this whole scene skeptically.
Speaker 1: He's never paid attention to a cow, never tasted chocolate
Speaker 1: until Louisa brought her bars for everyone to try. And
Speaker 1: Andre's impression is that he's going to need a lot
Speaker 1: of convincing. I didn't feel he he was, you know,
Speaker 1: troup confident that this thing would work, no plick put
Speaker 1: or to be a hide. A little female fish that
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, you know this thing, we
Speaker 1: will mess with my you know fish going to good
Speaker 1: catches the river. This is what they're up against. It's
Speaker 1: one thing to continue a how tradition that has lasted
Speaker 1: for centuries. It's another to build one from scratch. Nobody
Speaker 1: here has any romantic attachment to chocolate. They just have
Speaker 1: one very practical question, how is this going to improve
Speaker 1: my life? In a few hours, the pods are all
Speaker 1: broken and the boxes are full and starting to ferment
Speaker 1: in the steamy Amazon air. Each day Louisa Andre have
Speaker 1: to come back and turn the mass, scooping it into
Speaker 1: a new box and mixing the hot center and the
Speaker 1: cougar edges to the fermentation. Evens out. Three of the
Speaker 1: people at the workshop turn out to be from s
Speaker 1: OS Amazonia, the nonprofit that first alerted Louisa to the
Speaker 1: existence of this shiar wakako. They're here to learn the
Speaker 1: techniques and teach them to other communities even deeper in
Speaker 1: the back country, and so as just trying to open
Speaker 1: two more origins up prefer But they don't they don't
Speaker 1: know the Cacao Chainou the protocols, so they came to
Speaker 1: um learn with us. All of the collegues coming up
Speaker 1: is going to come for me. So that's not maybe
Speaker 1: the Queen of Amazon. Oh yeah, that's the main goal,
Speaker 1: I guess. The s O s Amazonia guys are young,
Speaker 1: born in the Amazon and familiar with its ways, and
Speaker 1: Louisa says she couldn't do this without them, and so
Speaker 1: as really helps a lot of people here. Yeah, everywhere
Speaker 1: they go they're like welcomed. So it's really good to
Speaker 1: be with them because then whenever we're arrive in somewhere
Speaker 1: like new place, they're like, oh, they're with us, and
Speaker 1: that's really important here in a region where activists are
Speaker 1: often killed. A few months after our visit in this
Speaker 1: same region, a British journalist and the indigenous rites activists
Speaker 1: he's working with will be murdered by a legal fisherman.
Speaker 1: Anything goes in the Amazon, and the life expectancy isn't
Speaker 1: high for anyone who challenges the illegal loggers, miners, ranchers
Speaker 1: and fishermen. But somehow ss Amazonia is making it work.
Speaker 1: The hope is that with their help, what Louise is
Speaker 1: doing here will start a wild cocow movement that can
Speaker 1: spread clear across the Amazon. We break for lunch, then
Speaker 1: head to the boat for our afternoon mission, looking for
Speaker 1: new recruits to produce enough chocolate to make the Jerwabar
Speaker 1: a real thing. Louisa needs more help, so we're going
Speaker 1: to visit each homestead on the river and hope she
Speaker 1: can work her magic. Our craft is a long, skinny
Speaker 1: boat with rows of benches like little pews. It feels
Speaker 1: like a theme park ride or the kind of thing
Speaker 1: missionaries would have used back in the day, And suddenly
Speaker 1: occurs to me that Louise and Andre are basically Coco
Speaker 1: missionaries bringing the gospel of chocolate to the Amazon. At
Speaker 1: each stop along the river, faces peer out of the
Speaker 1: windows at our mysterious entourage. But each time we doc
Speaker 1: people choose to listen were never turned away. Everyone collects
Speaker 1: on the cabin floor and sprawls out as Louisa makes
Speaker 1: her pitch. Yeah that was great. Actually, like this family
Speaker 1: has like a lot of people, so they have a
Speaker 1: lot of potential to get more pods. Yeah, I look
Speaker 1: like they're a bunch of kids there, and yeah, it
Speaker 1: has a nice vibe to it. It's amazing. Pretty much
Speaker 1: everyone is on board fourth family and that was nice.
Speaker 1: They so far they are the winning family. They got
Speaker 1: three hundred pods in one day and they said that
Speaker 1: if they had more time they would have caught more.
Speaker 1: So that's a win. And they're pretty excited about cacao.
Speaker 1: As we head back to day's that evening, I can
Speaker 1: feel the hole Jiwa dream becoming real. The pickers are
Speaker 1: all in, but now we need the fermentors, someone to
Speaker 1: run the station where everyone will drop off their beans
Speaker 1: and get paid. It's a much bigger commitment. And while
Speaker 1: they agreed to build the drawing shed and even put
Speaker 1: us up for a few days, so far he's still
Speaker 1: a firm. Now you're turning the box in layers, so
Speaker 1: we don't really like dig a hole in the box.
Speaker 1: We try to do it in layers because by doing
Speaker 1: it in this way we can make sure that we
Speaker 1: are cooking all the layers. Even for the next few days.
Speaker 1: Louisa keeps teaching using the special protocol she developed for
Speaker 1: the middle of Nowhere in more developed places. Pickow fermentation
Speaker 1: relies on a lot of gadgets, thermometers to measure heat,
Speaker 1: refractometers to see the level of sugar in the juice.
Speaker 1: But in the jungle, things break and batteries die. If
Speaker 1: a battery dies, you are four hours away by boot
Speaker 1: from the next city. Are you going to go and
Speaker 1: go there just to get the battery? Oh? The fermentation,
Speaker 1: please stop because I don't have a battery here. You know,
Speaker 1: like it's it doesn't work like that. So um, we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's just go buy the field smell tasting visual and
Speaker 1: the field the warmth. She developed her own low tech
Speaker 1: Amazonian protocol. I was like, well, the temperature of your
Speaker 1: body is X. If you get in get in there
Speaker 1: and the temperature feels higher, it's because the temperature is
Speaker 1: higher than thirty seven celsius. Because your your body tempature
Speaker 1: is thirty seven. If the temperature feels lower, it's because
Speaker 1: the metabolism of the whole mass is going down. And
Speaker 1: then smelling, oh look this alcohol smells really volatile. And
Speaker 1: then vinegar you almost want to cry when you when
Speaker 1: you like smell a lot of vinegar. So we slowly
Speaker 1: we had a protocol where they don't needed any gadgets
Speaker 1: to make a good being. Honestly, it's a total game
Speaker 1: changer for places like this Instead of fermentation being totally
Speaker 1: intimidating for people who aren't used to high tech gadgetry,
Speaker 1: the process becomes intuitive, it even fun. One person who's
Speaker 1: totally uninterested is z Andering. Louisa had him hanged as
Speaker 1: the guy to run this momentation center, but he often
Speaker 1: wanders away during the workshop. But as it turns out,
Speaker 1: we don't have to look far for a solution. Mic
Speaker 1: On his son is asking lots of good questions. Mica
Speaker 1: And is twenty, a handsome kid with an earring and
Speaker 1: stylish haircut. He blended seamlessly on streets of any city,
Speaker 1: and you can tell he's got his eye on the
Speaker 1: larger world. But he also loves life on the river.
Speaker 1: So after the workshop we asked him what he thinks
Speaker 1: people sash dasha ki. Yeah, it's so good, not too
Speaker 1: not too much work. No, no, I'm going to defease you.
Speaker 1: It's difficult because it's new, but the movement. As as
Speaker 1: time passes, he will He is sure that he can
Speaker 1: handle this process. How many boxes do you think you
Speaker 1: can handle? People said, Fuzzy wash five. That would be
Speaker 1: about KOs of dried cacao, enough for a few thousand bars.
Speaker 1: A good start. Later, when we're alone, Andre tells me
Speaker 1: where my CON's interest in Cacao comes from. He said
Speaker 1: that maybe there's a lot of over fishing. Every year
Speaker 1: there's a migration of the fish upstream up river, and
Speaker 1: he said that nowadays they have like a thousand boats
Speaker 1: waiting for the fish. Yeah, Michael ZiLs, but not not
Speaker 1: that many fish. And so he was really really hopeful
Speaker 1: that Kao could will become eventually something that would be
Speaker 1: bigger than fishing here, and it was. The problem is
Speaker 1: actually pretty devastating. Fish stocks throughout the Amazon are collapsing
Speaker 1: in the face of overfishing and climate change. The Amazon
Speaker 1: is the greatest abundance and diversity of freshwater fish in
Speaker 1: the world and that has always been the foundation of
Speaker 1: rivers diet and income. And when it goes they often
Speaker 1: go with him and the loggers and ranchers move in.
Speaker 1: So I can see why my con is so laser focused.
Speaker 1: And he said they were gonna work hot for that
Speaker 1: to happen bec become a major source of income in here,
Speaker 1: which was the very first time that I heard someone
Speaker 1: from from from here so enthusiastic, and so I think
Speaker 1: all are responsive about it. Is even bigger. He was really,
Speaker 1: you know, counting on us. If the community can band
Speaker 1: together with Louisa to preserve this wild cacao, it might
Speaker 1: just help them hang on. But for that to even
Speaker 1: be a possibility, the team has to make it to
Speaker 1: the finish line on this workshop, and Louisa, she's starting
Speaker 1: to flag for good reason. It's been seven years since
Speaker 1: we come to different communities in the Amazon, but it
Speaker 1: has never been so tough for me. Um I'm pregnant today,
Speaker 1: is actually twelve weeks pregnant, and first timemester is just
Speaker 1: I don't know, morning sickness, and to be here in
Speaker 1: this time of my pregnancy has been tough. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie, And of course I can't say what it's
Speaker 1: like to be fighting back morning sickness while you're getting
Speaker 1: mauled by pium and you're trying to stay positive about
Speaker 1: your cow works job. But I'm just going to go
Speaker 1: out on the limb and guess that it's not ideal
Speaker 1: and that to pull it off, you gotta believe. I
Speaker 1: can't help but think back to Louise's Aiahuasca awakening, her
Speaker 1: understanding that the forest and the people are one and
Speaker 1: her commitment to total partnership with the Amazon, and yet
Speaker 1: right now the Amazon is being a bit of an asshole.
Speaker 1: The rains are pounding, which drops the temperature, and that
Speaker 1: slows down the fermentation, which means the beans might not
Speaker 1: be done by tomorrow morning. But we have to leave
Speaker 1: tomorrow because there's no other flight out of Cruzaro for days.
Speaker 1: But if Louise has to leave before she can show
Speaker 1: everyone the final steps, that could endanger the whole experiment.
Speaker 1: And more urgently, the river and the swamp behind the
Speaker 1: shack are rising so fast that it's not clear we'll
Speaker 1: have any ground to stand on by tomorrow. Still, as
Speaker 1: we huddle in our cabin staring out at the rain,
Speaker 1: Andre says he's glad we can't we make this big
Speaker 1: bat that's raising our prices. Who would be engaged? More people?
Speaker 1: And did Uh? I was really surprised that they could
Speaker 1: build up fermenting am fermenting place, a place, a ferment total.
Speaker 1: Uh moved the boxes so so fast it's like a month.
Speaker 1: So I think Michael understood that here's an opportunity. I'm
Speaker 1: not to get up. Let that gonna go through much fingers.
Speaker 1: Let's works, Let's have a go. But that night the
Speaker 1: Amazon has a go at us. It's a deluge all
Speaker 1: night long. The river tears away chunks of the bank.
Speaker 1: The swamp is now a lake lapping at the edge
Speaker 1: of our cabin. It's somebody pulls a six ft anaconda
Speaker 1: out of it, but nobody even cares. Sometime after midnight,
Speaker 1: I hear the explosion of one of the huge trees
Speaker 1: in the compound, carrying leaps in its breeks. So one queasy,
Speaker 1: eternal second I wait to be crushed. Then the world
Speaker 1: explodes with the sound of the tree crashing down nearby,
Speaker 1: no direct hit. In the morning, an Amazonian giant stretches
Speaker 1: dead across the compound. It was a narrow sky and
Speaker 1: it's water water everywhere. The river is now as the
Speaker 1: rivers requaimed all the land like, there's just water everywhere. Um,
Speaker 1: there's very dry land for little walk on. We're supposed
Speaker 1: to head back to turo Desul that um, but that
Speaker 1: means a very long trip against the blow up river,
Speaker 1: and were is just gonna be full of massive trees
Speaker 1: tearing down stream um and doing so fast. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure the boat's gonna be able to do it. Louisa
Speaker 1: is concerned too. I'm so worried because we're growing on
Speaker 1: the river today. That's what I was talking about all night. Um,
Speaker 1: that river is just gonna be scammering and we have
Speaker 1: to go up river. I hope the rain stops today
Speaker 1: because if it doesn't, we are not flying tomorrow. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it feels grim. But then this guy is suddenly part
Speaker 1: for brief window and we take advantage. We scramble over
Speaker 1: the soggy ground the drying racks so Louisa can demonstrate
Speaker 1: the last step in the process, scooching through the spread
Speaker 1: out beans with your feet to push them into long
Speaker 1: rows for better drying off. In the Nac just scooched
Speaker 1: through the beans with her feet, gucci along the way
Speaker 1: to make channels and ridges things. But as she rushes
Speaker 1: through the process, mike On has some final questions. Later,
Speaker 1: Louisa gives me the lowdown. He thought it was quite
Speaker 1: easy and doable, which is always great. Um. He also
Speaker 1: asked how many days I thought it would take? Okay,
Speaker 1: how many days? I said between ten and twelve days.
Speaker 1: They want to take a picture. No, that sound you
Speaker 1: here is not a swarm of bees. It's a drone.
Speaker 1: Louise's team brought it along and it's time for the
Speaker 1: group photo, and then we scramble for the boat and
Speaker 1: push up river against the current. Well I think we
Speaker 1: got out, just like the last chopper out. Yeah, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, your feet, you look like you've got Hannah tattoos.
Speaker 1: New tattoo who is washing her feet in the river
Speaker 1: as we are hanging off in the boat. This is, uh,
Speaker 1: what's over? A new moment in extreme pick O. The
Speaker 1: storms return and we huddle under the boats, torn to heart,
Speaker 1: but our pilot is faced first into the down war
Speaker 1: for hours, dodging the trees that comes flailing down the current,
Speaker 1: any of them could capsuize us. But half a day
Speaker 1: later we straggle into trizero dosool like drowned rats. And
Speaker 1: the day after that we're back in sound Paolo and
Speaker 1: Louisa just has to cross her fingers. She's gone a
Speaker 1: even beyond, and so has Matt And now it's in
Speaker 1: the hands of the reburying news. They know what to do.
Speaker 1: We just have to hope that their relationship with Louisa
Speaker 1: is now deep enough and that the river cooperates. I
Speaker 1: want to taste of some of this god level chocolate.
Speaker 1: We got you covered. Kaleidoscope has joined forces with Louise
Speaker 1: Abram and Stetler Chocolate to make a special box to
Speaker 1: go along with this very podcast. Now you could sample
Speaker 1: flavors from the banks of the Amazon without having to
Speaker 1: fight off jaguars and anaconda's. Just visit www dot Stetler
Speaker 1: Dash Chocolate dot com to order your wild Chocolate today
Speaker 1: check the link in the show notes. A few months later,
Speaker 1: get a zoom call from Louisa. Hello, Hey, Luisa, can
Speaker 1: you hear your voice? How are you? I'm good? How
Speaker 1: how's it going? After so much waiting, this was the
Speaker 1: moment of truth and Louisa was calling me with the
Speaker 1: verdict straight from her factory floor. I just got into
Speaker 1: I never had so many beans in my factory, which
Speaker 1: is very, very exciting. This just was an eighteen. We
Speaker 1: had to klos this year. We got one point one ton,
Speaker 1: so you double this is double that? Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just opened too of the stacks and right off the bat,
Speaker 1: I know that dish is my Jubi. They smell great.
Speaker 1: I am beyond happy and hoping that everyone loved it. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I was too Somewhere along the way I got invested.
Speaker 1: I would have been heartbroken to see this cacao and
Speaker 1: those Riverino's give way to cattle ranches. And if you
Speaker 1: think we were happy, well there I am sitting in
Speaker 1: my office, the same place where I got the email,
Speaker 1: and Heather marketing coordinator walks in puts it on my
Speaker 1: desk and I look up and she's got tears in
Speaker 1: her eyes. Matt Caputo was over the moon. His crazy
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollar bet had just paid off. I asked
Speaker 1: Matt to walk me through the moment when there's your
Speaker 1: wah bars first arrived. I was like, this is it,
Speaker 1: and she's like, I'm just nodding her head. And so
Speaker 1: I opened it up and I'm so nervous that I
Speaker 1: pop it in my mouth and then the flavors open
Speaker 1: up and everything that I love about Judua in the
Speaker 1: past is there. I just know than ten seconds, this
Speaker 1: is the best chocolate Louisa has ever made. This bar
Speaker 1: doesn't taste like anything else anywhere in the world. You
Speaker 1: know we did something where we we helped to preserve
Speaker 1: this cacao, and I know the other like minded people
Speaker 1: like me are going to appreciate this and to join
Speaker 1: us in this fight, and the beautiful thing in this
Speaker 1: fight is, you know, our weapons that we use, or
Speaker 1: sharing stories and tastes of things that we love and
Speaker 1: kind of spreading that love, chocolate and love. What could
Speaker 1: possibly go better together? Right? I forgot chocolate and revenge.
Speaker 1: So we agreed to catch catch the guys in Flagrante Forest.
Speaker 1: How's that gonna happen? Yeah, he said he would need help,
Speaker 1: and then we do an operation and we get the people. Yes,
Speaker 1: just when you thought it was safe to go back
Speaker 1: in Bolivia, it's the return of Vulcar next week on Obsessions.
Speaker 1: Wild Chocolate. Wild Chocolate is a Kaleidoscope production with I
Speaker 1: Heart Podcasts, hosted and reported by me Rowan Jacobson and
Speaker 1: produced by Shane McKeith at Nice Marmot Media. Edited by
Speaker 1: Kate Osbourne and my Guest how to Kudor, Sound design
Speaker 1: and mixing by Sound Boring. Original music composition by Spencer Stevenson.
Speaker 1: A k a Botany production helped from Baheni Shorty from
Speaker 1: My Heart. Our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Laura Mayor, Gustas Linos Oswalash and Aaron Kaffman,
Speaker 1: Will Pearson, codel Burn, Bob Pittman, Daria Daniel, and the
Speaker 1: team at Stetler who are helping us make a very
Speaker 1: special chocolate of our own. That's right, We're working with
Speaker 1: Louisa at others to protect the rainforest and make delicious
Speaker 1: Amazonian chocolate. Visit www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com
Speaker 1: to taste it for yourself. That's www dot Stetler dash
Speaker 1: Chocolate dot com. And if you want to hear more
Speaker 1: of this type of content. Nothing is more important to
Speaker 1: the creators here at Kaleidoscope than subscribers, ratings, and reviews.
Speaker 1: Please spread the up wherever you listen.