It’s On My List

February 9, 2025

Lima is the capital and largest city in Peru, with a population of over 10 million. The seaport district where we docked, Callao, was described by Cruise Director Daniel as “sketchy”, but there was a complimentary shuttle that drove us 40 minutes away to the Miraflores area, which is where the rich people live and is therefore very well-policed and considered safe for tourists. From there, one could take an additional 30-minute taxi or Uber ride to the city center to visit numerous historic sites and museums.

While I am sure I would have found downtown Lima interesting, I wasn’t sure I was up for the challenge of navigating my way through a city bigger than New York. I also didn’t want to spend the day on a long bus excursion. I therefore searched Google for things to do in Miraflores and found the perfect thing – a 2-hour “Bean to Bar” workshop at the Choco Museo. “In this 2h hands-on workshop, you’ll do all the handcraft cacao process, you’ll experience what the Maya offered to the gods, and you will go on through the history, with the Conquistadores and the industrial revolution. At the end, you’ll take home the chocolates that you’ll have made with a selection of over a dozen toppings.” I mean, cacao is an important part of the history and culture of South America, so I decided to do this for purely educational purposes.

According to Google maps, Choco Museo was a 27-minute walk from where the bus dropped us, which I translated to an hour for a geriatric sloth with a poor sense of direction. The bus dropped us very near Parque del Amor (aka Love Park), so I decided to stroll over to view El Beso (the Kiss), which is one of the highlights for a visit to Lima, before making my way to chocolate school.

I decided to splurge on the $12 fee from AT&T to get full phone service in a foreign country for 24 hours. This enabled me to use Google maps to navigate my way to the chocolate place. The Miraflores district has lots of shady green parks, so I was able to take a few breaks from the relentless sun along the way. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, so there were a lot of families out and about enjoying the parks.

From the website, I had envisioned Choco Museo as, like, an actual building, so I was very confused when I reached the destination indicated on my Google map with no museum building in sight. (Side note, why does Google say things like, “head southwest toward Av. Arequipa”? How am I supposed to know which way is southwest?!?! I just do my best to make sure my little blue triangle is moving the right way down the dotted trail. It often is not.) Anyway, it turns out that Choco Museo is essentially a kiosk within the Inka Market, which is a big open-air marketplace filled with dozens of small vendors. I was a bit taken aback, but it turned out to be a great experience.

There were just six of us in the class, which was conducted in English. We started with selecting molds to make our chocolates and then choosing dark or milk chocolate. We then had a multitude of different fillings – nuts, fruits, candy, spices, that we could add to our chocolates. Once we were done, the chocolates were moved to the refrigerator to set, and the educational part began. We learned that the cacao pods grow on the trunk of the tree, which is unusual but makes sense given how heavy they are. We learned about the process for harvesting, fermenting and drying the cacao beans. We then got to roast some beans and then mash them up with a mortar and pestle.

From this cacao paste we produced two drinks – the Mayan drink, which is made with water, honey, and chili pepper; and the conquistador drink, which is made with milk, sugar, cinnamon and cloves. Oh, we also made tea with the shells from the roasted beans. We then learned about modern processing, which is of course much more efficient than mortar and pestle and which produces both cocoa powder and cocoa butter. It was all really fun and interesting. Unfortunately, by the time I made it “home” to the ship, my chocolates had melted into an indistinguishable blob, so I’ve been breaking off chunks with mystery fillings. Happily, since I chose the fillings, they are all things I like!

I then spent some time poking around the stalls in the Inka Market. While there were some handmade crafts, the majority appeared to sell mass-produced items. It reminded me of the “straw markets” you often see in Caribbean ports. I ended up buying a set of over-priced placemats that I am pretty sure were made in China. The woman selling them was Peruvian, so I was at least putting my dollars into the local economy. And they will always remind me of this day in Lima.

On my way back to the bus stop, I visited the Larcomar shopping mall, which is built into the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The view was amazing. You could see surfers on the beach far below. The stores were mostly familiar brands that one would expect to see in a wealthy suburb. I poked around a bit, but it was crowded, and I decided it was time to retreat to the ship.

I’m finding as this voyage goes along that it works well for me to do a blend of big excursions, like the one I did to the archaeological sites in Trujillo, and smaller, more focused experiences, like the chocolate class.