Day 1
Once again we Had an overnight but so arrived in thr city early at 6am. This time Josh had managed to sleep but Rachel had not so Rachel was very hopeful that we could go straight bed when we got to the hostel. Fortunately we could so that's what we did. Once we were up we had breakfast and went on about planning our day. We decided to go to Alpaca world as it was free and you just don't get tired of seeing Alpacas. Here told us all the differences between alpacas, llamas and other animals related to them. After that we went to a crepe place we had seen on our way for lunch which was delicious. We then had a little time before the free walking tour we wanted to do so went to the supermarket to get some water and some food for dinner. The walking tour took us all over Arequipa and it was very clear that it was a beautiful city with fantastic architecture which was full of people that are very proud of the city. After the walking tour we went to where the tour had started to book a chocolate making class for the next day before heading back to the hostel to relax and have dinner.
Day 2
Rachel was a bit run down, the air on from the bus had given her a bad cold, so we decided to spend the morning relaxing at the hostel in the sun before heading out to the crepe place again. We then headed to the chocolate factory to learn about making chocolate and to make our own. The person taking the class, Adrian, was a chocolate sommelier and producer of chocolate for this company. We began by looking at the cocoa beans, and sorting the good from the bad. If the shell had any type of damage then it was no good for chocola t making as it would burn when being dried out. Instead, these beans are used to make tea. Tea from cacao beans is actually healthier than green tea, as cacao is the biggest source of natural antioxidants. Even though the tea smelt delicious and chocolate unfortunately the taste did not match. We then de-shelled the beans we hadn’t sorted that had been dried out in an oven before grinding them up to make a paste. Machines that do this process to get the beans fine enough takes 4-6 days. We then learnt about the ingredients to make real chocolate. Only 4. Cocoa mass - provides colour and bitterness. Cocoa butter provides the aroma. Powdered milk and sugar. And that’s it, just in different quantities to produce different types. However the production of real chocolate is very expensive, so more often than not company’s substitute the real  related  similar effect. Palm oil, sunflower oil and rapeseed oil replace the cocoa butter. Vanilla, vanillin, coulourings and bitterings replace the cocoa mass. Liquid milk replaces powdered milk, which then results in malt, solidifies and emulsifiers having to be used otherwise the chocolate would be unable to set. The sugar doesn’t get replaced, just increase hugely in amount. After the heartbreaking new season that all chocolate is fake we went to make our own real ones. We put some flavours in our little modules like salt, peanuts, coca, coffee before filling the, with chocolate super quickly and tapping them to get all the air out and mix inthe flavours, once these were in the fridge we had a chocolate tasting to see if what we had learned had paid off - could we distinguish between fake and real chocolates. We could!! We got all 5 right. We had such a good time at the workshop and learnt so much, but it certainly won’t be stoppping us from enjoying the fake chocolate back home.