Villa Vanilla, Naranjito, Aguirre, Punta

At the last minute via Reddit, I found a tour at this spice farm just about a half hour from Manuel Antonio. I'm so glad I did because it was such a fun tour!

Joyce was our tour guide and had SO MUCH information about how they harvest cacao, vanilla beans, cloves, peppercorns.. how they hand pollinate they vanilla plants and how much painstaking work is put into getting these spices. She taught us about medicinal uses and what is bad about cheap spices. We walked all around the tour in the rain but it was so worth it.

At the end of the tour, we were presented with a tasting menu of delicious food made with spices from the farm. The craziest by far was the xocoatl, or Mayan drink of the gods. Made with dark chocolate and cayenne pepper, it was QUITE spicy. She had us taste it first, and then put a few drops of vanilla extract in it and by some miracle of science the vanilla tamed down the spiciness of the cayenne. Amazing.

At the end of the tour we stopped by the shop and ended up buying quite a lot of $$ worth of spices that I can't wait to try out!Read more