Santo Domingo (the farm)

The boys and I went to the family farm. The girls were party poopers and didn't want to come!
The drive there takes about 2.5 hours. and it is all windy streets around the mountains.

 

 After getting a bit car sick from all the turns we made it to the farm. The family own so much land. on one side of the road they have started a development. That is where the house is. We started the night with a wonderful dinner. Clay oven slow roasted pork. fried and boiled yucas, salad, and amazing mango salsa.

After a very hot nights sleep we woke up and watched Jurassic park... Yes Jurassic park and we were all very excited about it. Great breakfast then it was time to meet Gloria and Oscar. 

This is Gloria. She is a Galapagos tortoise. Both her and Oscer were brought to Lars's father many many years ago. Although they are only native to the Galapagos islands they have been happy here. Lars and his brother have tried to give them back to the islands but it has been too dangerous there for this to happen. Poachers are still taking out these animals. 

We do not know the exact age of Either Gloria or Oscar. They guess that Gloria is around 80 years old and weighs about 250 pounds. There are 11 species of Galapagos tortoises still alive today. These tortoises are domed shaped because they eat vegetation near the ground. I don't know their exact subspecies but i would have to guess close to a porteri.

This is Oscar. Is is much bigger, weighing around 400 pounds. We think is is about 120 years old. You can kind of tell that his right leg is bent in at a weird angle. He got hurt about 4 months ago, no idea how. but he did not move for 3 months. The cool this about these tortoises is that they can go long periods of time with out eating. They can survive a year without eating or drinking. Because of this when pirates and sailors would go to the Galapagos to restock they would bring along many tortoises. That way they had fresh food that they did not have to feed or take car of on long journeys. 

Then we went to the farm!

They have tons of macadamia nuts around everywhere. Lars's father loved them so much that he names the farm after them and then planted thousands. They are so good freshly broken open!

Not yet ripe on the trees

Starting to split open. 

The outer shell is very easy to open and it naturally splits open when ripe and drying out. The inner shell is very hard to crack. We used our inner man strength and a rock! so delicious!

The farm has mostly cocoa trees. The trees that contain the seeds that make chocolate. He has so many species and kinds of trees

This one pod. The pods come in different colors and shaped depending on the type of tree.

Each pod contains about 40 seeds. These seeds have a white milky fruit meat around them that you can suck off and it is sweet. To make chocolate you have to dry the seeds is a very scientific fermentation process. .

Some cool animals I found walking around1

Before we left we had to go visit Gloria and Ocar again and decided to feed them!