Trapiche Tour
Quick Facts
- Location : A mile west of the soccer field in Santa Elena, just off route 606 in Monteverde.
- Area : 30 acres
- Hours : 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Mon.-Sat.; Sun. one tour at 3 p.m.
- Telephone : 2645-7650/2645-7780
- Entrance Fee : $32 adults, $28 students, $12 ages 6-12
As the molasses begins to cool, it's poured into pools over a large wooden countertop where visitors make their own candy. The guide comes around with fresh coffee grounds (made on the farm) and sprinkles into the mixture as visitors churn the sugar using wooden spoons. As the sugar mixes with the air, it cools into a golden toffee.
read more closeThe Trapiche is an old sugar mill that's been renovated to show visitors how sugar cane is grown and processed into sugar. Over the years the tour has grown to include coffee and cocoa. Guides lead visitors through the fields where the coffee and sugar cane are grown and the processing centers for each crop.
The highlight of the tour, besides making the candy, is watching how the sugar cane is processed into white or raw sugar. First, visitors are shown the traditional method, using oxen to turn a large gear as farmers feed sugar cane into a large press. Then they're shown the actual mill, using water from the sugar cane fields, a water wheel turns a large gear as the sugar cane passes through a massive press, squeezing out the sugar juice. The leftover pulp is dried and used in the fires to boil the sugar juice and make brown sugar.
At nearly every stop on the tour, visitors have the chance to smell, touch and taste; They'll gnaw on raw sugar cane to suck out the sweet juice, chew on dried, roasted coffee and chocolate beans, drink fresh brewed coffee and of course, eat candy that they make themselves.