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Another Great Thing About Peru

The other great thing about Peru, was that they had Duty Free in the airport with a full stock of Cadbury and Milka chocolates. So supplies are back up to semi-acceptable levels. I was also able to procure some very good Peruvian Chocolate.


Yes that is the refrigerator that I'm storing my Cadbury (and Peruvian Chocolate) in. I know "they" say you shouldn't store chocolate in the refrigerator but I've found that good quality chocolate generally holds up very well in the refrigerator. Besides it's been so hot; it would melt outside of the refrigerator.

I did have a slight issue with meltage in Peru. When we went to the Maras salt mines, they had a bunch of shops that sold salt. They also sold salted chocolate. It was delicious. We also went to the ChocoMuseo in Cusco. Had I known of its existence, I would have booked a class (even though it seemed many of the students were kids). It was a very small museum but very interesting. They also served this wonderful chocolate tea. It really was just steeped cocoa bean shells. Of course, I bought some to bring home.  (Yes I'm getting to the melty part). I also tossed in some cocoa powder - because why not? Now my worry is - will I be able to get cocoa shells for tea here when I run out? I know you can buy it as mulch but I don't think I would want to use that bleh. Most of the chocolate tea sold here has black tea in it and doesn't really taste like chocolate to me. I may be doing some mail order.

Needles to say, I bought chocolate at both places. When we were cruising the Amazon, we had these huge floor to ceiling windows in our cabin.

See window+bag=melted chocolate
I had my bag on the luggage rack - well guess what - the close to the equator sun was beating down on my bag - DUH! Didn't think that what was in the bag was also getting hot. So out of the bag and in front of the air conditioning unit the chocolate went. It didn't do the chocolate from the Museo too much harm but it did do the Maras salted chocolate harm. It just didn't taste the same.

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