Ilheus (FEB 21)

Our luck ran out. The forecast for today called for tropical showers.  Unlike the last three days that had the same forecast, today it rained.  Looking astern of us as the ship pulled into the pier, we could see a shower overtaking us.  It was to be the first of numerous ones divided by brief periods of blue sky and sun.

The next shower ambushed us as we disembarked the ship for our tour.  It was not raining when we stepped ashore, but the further we walked from the ship towards our bus, naturally the furthest one away, the harder it rained.  It was a catch-22 situation; stop and get wetter while getting out our rain gear or just keep heading for the bus hoping not to get too wet. 

Our first stop was Saint Jorge Church.  Everyone couldn’t wait to get inside, less from religious fervor than the fact that it was raining again. 

From the church, we walked across the street to the Vesuvio Bar where Jorge Amado spent much of his time.  (I’ll get back to him in the next paragraph.)  Apparently the Vesuvio Bar was, years ago, a favorite hangout for men waiting while their wives were in church.  It seems that the bar had a tunnel that led to the building pictured below where the options were more expansive than just a choice of what drink.

Jorge Amado was a “beloved” Brazilian author.  I was beginning to feel a faint (but no doubt passing) sense of guilt that I should have read something by him before coming on the trip when our guide Geraldine admitted that she had never read anything he wrote, nor did she plan to do so.  Her take on his writing was that it was ‘earthy’, describing life in Brazil best understood by those who lived there at that time. 

We walked to Jorge Amado’s home and went inside for a tour.  Three tour buses worth of people tried to get inside a small house, now a museum, to escape the rain.  The result was I could not step back far enough to get a view of most of the exhibits and could hear only snippets of what our guide was interpreting for the museum guide who spoke no English.  I did hear her say that good old Jorge liked to name his clothing.  “Beloved”, did his writing in a bar, eccentric and no longer a reading staple of Brazilians: I do not think Jorge will be added to my Kindle wish list anytime soon.

This sculpture greets you as you enter Jorge’s house.

While I was mentally distancing myself from spending quality time with a book by the author, I liked the story about how his father got the house he which Jorge lived.  He was dirt poor until he won a lottery that allowed him to buy the house and live comfortably the rest of his life.  Of course, with a three-degrees-out-of-plumb son like Jorge, “comfortable” is open to interpretation.

Presumably each piece of the Jorge ensemble had a name.

We wandered around Ilheus being periodically rained on, usually when I wanted to take a picture.  After a stop to buy some chocolate, the Ilheus region being famous for it, we headed back to the bus.

Municipal building

The cocoa of the Ilheus area was the source of its wealth for many years until a blight called “Witch’s Broom” hit the region.  This blight, along with a prolonged (i.e. generations) lack of investment in maintaining and diversifying the agrarian infrastructure brought the good times of the Ilheus region to an abrupt halt. The region has never recovered.

The local cocoa growers who remain have now learned to mitigate the damage still caused by Witch’s Broom.  Small operations, many of these growers now maintain control of their product from “bean to bar”, improving their revenue.  Ilheus chocolate has started winning international competitions, but in the equivalent of a micro-brew category.

 The above is preamble to telling you about our trip to a cocoa farm. 

We drove inland for about 20 kilometers to Faz. Yrere. [“faz” is short for “fazenda” which in English is “farm”.]

From the bus we walked up a mostly dirt road.  Although it had now stopped raining, the rain had turned the road to a slippery mud.  About 100 yards from the bus, we came to a gathering place.  Ah, if only this had been where we were going to learn everything there was to know about cocoa farming, but no. We were told that for first part of that bit of education we still had another walk of about the same distance as from the bus.  Nope.  It was longer, hillier and slipperier.  The trail was enclosed in vegetation, preventing any breeze from dissipating the humidity.  It was the antithesis of a pleasant stroll through the woods.

The presentation was interesting, although other than seeing a cocoa tree it could be been given back at the farmhouse.  We learned that to mitigate the impact of Witch’s Broom and other potential threats, the government had developed hybrid plants that grew multiple varieties of cocoa nuts on a single tree. We got to taste the raw fruit seed, being careful to suck on it, but not bite into it. 

After slipping and sliding our way back down the trail, we went to a shed where cocoa beans were roasted, there being an intermediate ‘fermenting’ step we did not see.

The beans are spread out on a flat surface under a tin roof.  Periodically the tin roof is slid back on its rails and the beans turned so that they roast evenly.

We went up to the farmhouse to have a surprisingly good unsweetened chocolate drink. There was an opportunity to buy some of the farm’s chocolate.  Pam did.  After tasting it, she decided it was unlikely it will be making the trip home with us.

We returned to the bus which took us back to the ship. The weather had gotten considerably nicer, making for a nice sail-away.