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Creamy, gooey, mouth-melting, milk, white, dark, bitter, sweet … chocolate melts our hearts not just our taste buds.

As the story goes, chocolate was once considered gold. Prized by the Aztecs and Mayans, and formerly reserved only for royalty in Europe, chocolate has held an irresistible allure for cultures worldwide over the past 4,000 years. In some areas, chocolate beans were even used as currency.

Chocolate comes from the seeds of the cacao fruit tree, which originated in the Americas, and g

If you visited the beautiful property of Playa Nicuesa Rainforest Lodge four decades ago, instead of a high-end Costa Rica eco-lodge, you would have found only “chocolate trees.”

Cacao tree plantations were once plentiful in Costa Rica’s southernmost region of the Golfo Dulce and Osa Peninsula. Cacao was an important export market for Costa Rica until the fungus blight called Monilia destroyed 95% of production in 1979.

On the Chocolate Tour at Playa Nicuesa Rainforest Lodge, you will learn abo

You aren’t buying a chocolate bar experience with a bag of Navitas Cacao Sweet Nibs. Instead you get the cacao bean's raw essence in unrefined crumbled bits that are gently rolled in raw cacao liquor and then lightly sweetened with organic cane juice. For diehard chocoholics, they are the perfect answer to getting your unadulterated fix of this Mayan superfood…kind of like coffee appreciators chewing on perfectly roasted yet slightly sweetened beans. For those of us preferring them as an accent