Our second day at the lodge, we started with chocolate making after breakfast. A chocolatier came and showed us step by step how to craft up this amazing sweet treat. We began by roasting the beans over the fire place. We then cracked open all the beans to get the shell off before grinding it into a paste. The chocolatier boiled water over the fire with a mint leaf, cinnamon leaf, and orange leaf to flavor the chocolate as well as sugar. After letting the flavors infuse into the water, we added the chocolate paste and cooked it until some of the water cooked off and it became melted chocolate consistency. They then brought out bananas for us to taste the chocolate with. It was very delicious but a bit more bitter than I am used to.
A couple of us then went to explore the small beach at the lodge. After, it was time for a 2 mile river hike so we put on our tall boots and headed off. The hike was amazing! We walked through some shallow parts to some very very high parts. There was one section we had to swim through and as we were swimming there were bats in the cave. Meg, Alexa, Ava and I even got lifted up to a cove that reminded me of the one from mako mermaids coves. I was truly living out my mermaid dreams. We saw a couple more small waterfalls before reaching the end were we could jump in and swim.
After the hike, we are all very hungry but luckily they had lunch ready for us when we got back to the lodge. We had chicken and rice with a salad for lunch. Kallari, an ecuadorian chocolate company, came to do a presentation and chocolate tasting. It was all delicious and I of course bought more bars! We then had some rest time before heading to dinner. When we went up to eat, the power was out. We made makeshift lamps with phone lights and water bottles, and they also brought up some candles. We shortly headed to bed after as we would have a long day on our journey to the Waorani Nation the next day.