Our Visit to Maya Mountain Cocoa in Belize ⛰

Here is a rundown of our trip to Belize, visiting the incredible farmers who grow the cocoa beans for our

award-winning 73% Belize bar 🏆 🍫

We promise it will be more informative than being held at a friend's or relative's house with a never-ending slideshow of their holiday photos. We'll share more insight into why every bar you buy REALLY does make an impact.

First, a little background on Maya Mountain Cacao, it was founded in 2010 and, since then, has put Belize on the map.

They have pioneered a unique and central fermentation method, which means farmers don’t have to worry about this critical stage of fermenting and drying cacao. Instead, they can focus solely on growing award-winning beans. Oh, and they do this so well! 🤩

Currently, there are over 420 certified organic farmers on Maya Mountain, based in the Toledo district of Belize.

Meet our new friends and amazing guides!! Left to right Andy, Amarachi, Fidencio, Manel and Serapio

While in Belize, we took a trip to meet Diana, Alisha and Paulina, mother and daughters, on their family-run farm, in the best location ever…

Outside their front door! 🙌🏾

The farm was originally owned and run by Diana and Alisha’s father, who unfortunately passed away recently, leaving the farm for them to run.

It was incredible speaking to them about how they are managing the farm. All farms that supply Maya Mountain must be organic, so no pesticides to keep pesky Woodpeckers away who tend to make holes in the cocoa pods, even though they don’t eat the beans 🙄

The Maya Mountain truck goes out every two weeks to various farms to pick up and pay for cacao from farmers. This happens every two weeks so framers can have a steady income, and there are no cacao submissions that are not standard, climate change! With the changing climate, cocoa is grown all year round, so there needs to be a service to collect it.

There has been an interesting, not-so-equitable history of cocoa buyers over promising farmers and not delivering or paying for cacao. As Maya Mountain is the only cacao buyer in Belize, they work in partnership with farmers on an equitable level.

Once the cocoa beans are collected, they are put into boxes; this is the fermentation phase. I stuck my hand in one of the boxes, and it was piping hot; fermentation was well underway 🤩

Every 48hrs the beans are moved from one box to another to turn them. This will go on for about a week!

Then the drying. The beans are placed on drying racks to dry into the cocoa beans you will recognise.

Each bean at Maya Mountain is hand-sorted, cue… The sexy machine! 😊 

After hand sorting, Serapio demonstrated how they are sorted again. Apparently, it's called the sexy machine because shaking your hips like this does wonders for you. LOL! 🤣👇🏾

Over the years, it’s become more common from the origins we use to have a thorough sorting before putting them in the sacks.

If you’ve ever visited our factory, you will have seen all our sacks hanging on the walls;

Maya Mountain is proudly there! ❤️