“Having a business is like having children; it doesn’t really make sense money-wise, and it’s the same with a small business.” -Barbara Wilson, Co-Founder of Mindo Chocolate Makers While Covid-19 has ravaged populations around the world, it’s also nearly halted the global economy. Almost every industry around the world is heavily affected, most often in …

“I would say… for the farmers we’re working with, [for] eighty percent of them cacao is the most important income solution, but for zero percent it’s their only income.” -Jan Schubert, Conservation Leader at Original Beans Chocolate Jan Schubert works in the cocoa industry in Latin America, largely in Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia. Focusing on …

To whomever actually reads the introduction, in many ways this is a list of places I want to travel to in the near future (a few of which I’ve already been to). But this is mostly an article for you, the reader, who visits this site for insight into how the research I’ve done has …

Unsurprisingly, my friends who told me that I would fall in love with Ecuador were right. At the time I wrote this I was sitting in the Quito airport, mentally preparing to leave the remarkable country of Ecuador, and readying for a whole new culture shock in Peru. Though my suitcase was packed, underweight, and …

The strangest thing is that I was thinking, right before it happened, that I should have tried harder to convince my parents to come to dinner with me. They should probably eat again, and it’s dangerous to be out alone at night. So here I recount a tale of something that happened to me exactly …

If you had wandered into the town of Mindo just 15 years ago, you would never have seen advertisements for canyoning or chocolate tours. The infrastructure simply did not exist back then. However, over the past several years, the town just two hours north of capital city Quito has exploded with activity, nowadays earning about …

America’s coffee obsession is paying off in groves… hundreds of groves. I miss not knowing where my food comes from. I miss the blissful ignorance of sitting in a cafe, being only vaguely aware that coffee comes from a tropical tree, or maybe a bush, but never quite being able to picture it. This Carolina …

Last month when I was visiting Mindo, Ecuador, I had the luck of running into José Meza, one half of the chocolate power couple behind Mindo Chocolate. I was so nervous about approaching him that I psyched myself up all afternoon, but it was all for nothing, since he was a great guy and easy …

Did you know that Ecuador has a thriving viticulture sector? I certainly didn’t realize this until last month, when I met a man in the cafe who started me talking on chocolate (surprise, surprise), and ended up with my email address and website name. Then he took me out for wine. Growing a Fine Food Scene …

The best way to explain the stunning beauty of San Cristobal Island in the Galapagos is to show it to you. Even the best cameras remain unable to capture the isle as well as my memory has, but who would I be if I didn’t try? Below is a visual timeline of my journey across San …