The Solo Scale:

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In Monteverde, there are so many adventure-friendly excursions, day trips, and activities you can do. Many of them involve adrenaline (like zip-lining or hikes through cloud forests), but there’s another way to get your thrill on and that involves sugar, chocolate, and a local liquor that will also get your heart-rate up.

Just outside of Monteverde’s downtown core, you’ll find El Trapiche Tour. Upon arrival, you’ll wait for the rest of your group (and will even receive a sticker). If you’re staying in Monteverde and don’t want to worry about getting there or back, you can pay an extra fee to have transportation included.

The tour itself is just under 2 hours and runs three times a day (as of this writing). The tour itself includes:

• Bilingual guide
• Coffee Tour + Chocolate Tour + Sugar Cane Tour
• Tastings: Sugar cane, roasted coffee, sobado (sugar cane candy), cocoa fruit, dry and roasted cocoa, white and dark chocolate,
• Snack at the end of the tour; Aracache (typical dish), coffee, lemonade, piece of chocolate.

El Trapiche Tour

What Will You See On The Tour?

Throughout the tour, you’ll see sugarcane stalks rising high into the sky, beautiful terrace views of coffee plants (though there isn’t enough here to be a working farm), cacao trees, pineapples, and even bananas. There’s also plenty of local wildlife roaming around (typically hoping to get a taste of something). On the tour, there’s a touch of uphill hiking, but nothing too difficult, so it’s fairly accessible to all.

There’s no shortage of information, either. After you’ve seen the coffee plants and the cherries that will eventually become coffee beans, you’ll be taken inside to see the roasting and grinding process, including some amazing machines like a bean sorter by size, and a guide to the roasting process (which also includes handy definitions about light, regular, and dark roasts!)

You’re not just going to be learning, though. While there’s no shortage of information, there’s also a much more practical element to the tour. You’ll get to:

• Try cacao beans before being processed into chocolate (in all their slimy, strange glory)
  
• Try the actual chocolate itself, from milk to dark and white and see how it’s made
  
• Make your own sugar from the sugarcane and keep it (if you want to). It’s not quite like the sugar you’d expect and it’s not quite caramel either, but it’s a unique experience. It’s also a touch awkward if you want to take it home with you, because it’s still sugar and unless you plan to consume it, it might not be the easiest to get home
  
• You’ll also get a treat at the end of the tour with extremely smooth and delicious coffee, some very strong rum, and a few other snacks to share

The Sampling

Once the tour is complete, you’ll end where you started — in the lobby — but this will also be an opportunity to buy some of the products that you learned about on your tour. There’s award-winning coffee beans available, along with chocolate bars and other products that make great souvenirs. This was a great place for me to stock up on the dark roast coffee and chocolate bars that my family was expecting me to bring home!

Book your tour today at their website and prepare to taste some incredible local delicacies (though some might be more adventurous than you’re expecting!)

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