Chocolate lovers sweetened by upcoming cacao festival
There is an event coming up in the deep south that sounds promising for chocolate lovers and will provide an excellent opportunity to get better acquainted with natural beauty of the Toledo District. The third annual Cacao Festival is drawing near and today Chair of the festival committee, Armando Choco, visited our studios to give us the details of this year’s activities. The festival, which is organized by the Toledo Cacao Growers Association and the Belize Tourism Board’s Toledo branch, showcases the rich culture of cacao and chocolate produced in the southernmost district. It is also a way of extending the tourism high season and according to Choco, it’s an event that chocolate lovers won’t want to miss.
Armando Choco, Chair, Cacao Festival Committee
“The event will cover the wine and chocolate evening that will be held on Friday the twenty-second. It will be at the University of Belize Punta Gorda Terrace. That will feature the Delille Academy Choir, the marimba players from Tumul Kin and it’s basically an evening for people to socialize to the taste of wine and to the taste of chocolate. On Saturday also, we have the taste of Toledo. The taste of Toledo is held at the Punta Gorda Central Park. We will be having a cross section of local dishes in the Toledo District. We’ll also be having chocolate products; ice cream and other products made from chocolate, craft fair also. Then we also have something for the children; cacao for kids is what we call it whereby children will not be left out. Everything little that relates to chocolate, education for the children. That will be held at Punta Gorda Civic Center and of course, we have for the rural communities, it will be a day that they can come into town. If they want to go on a boat ride to the bay of Honduras, it will be quite reasonable for the children, affordable for the farmers especially to go for a boat ride, see Toledo. And of course, in the evening, for the tourists, we have Culture in Harmony event that will be different private sector businesses that will be in and around Punta Gorda will be having an activity in the evening. Then the following day, Sunday that’s when we have the cacao trail tours whereby we give both international visitors and the local visitors the opportunity to experience cacao farming and also to experience chocolate making process.”
The Cacao Festival will take place from May twenty-second to the twenty-fourth.
