Choco Museo

I found two new vending machines in my office building, y’all! They are hidden underneath the stairs in one of the building’s entrance lobbies. This discovery has led to numerous irresponsible trips for snacks during critical hours at work (critical hours means when I start to starve and act like I’m dying of hunger for something salty and or sweet before lunch time (and 1,5 hours after), or when I have a deadline hanging over my head yet my brain decided to be out of order all of the sudden for no reason).

So what’s the big deal about this vending machine? Nothing, really. Nothing at all. It just another regular vending machines; one for sweet and salty snacks and one for sodas, but somehow I am very excited about it. You can assume this is because I've lived an awkward childhood in third world country, deprived of both vending machines and coins. Therefore, putting coins into a machine in exchange of snacks of my choice fascinates me.

Finding this new snack corner brought as much joy as when I found this impressive chocolate shop called ChocoMuseo in Cartagena by accident. It felt like winning a chocolate flavored jackpot.

Choco Museo is an elaborate chocolate shop (although it claims itself as a free-interactive chocolate museum) that not only offers amazing products of chocolate, but they also explain to you the chocolate making process, from the tree of the God's bean to the glorious chocolate bars.This shop or we can call it a museum, has a cute café corner that offers a menu full of chocolate and workshops for those who want to take a quick class on making treats made of chocolate (reserve your place in advance).

The staff that guided us around was very friendly and he spoke English very well. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember his name. The intoxicating smell of high-quality chocolate that filled the entire shop gave me an intense (and enjoyable) brain fog episode. He also told us a comprehensive history of cacao beans and chocolate around the world, which once again I couldn't store all those valuable information due to the chocolatic brain fog. I blame him for this though. How could he even think that I could concentrate on an information while being surrounding by those enticing, cacao-based artisanal products??

What I love the most about this shop is that they let you taste a sample of each of their products without giving you the slightest hint of pressure to buy anything. I think this is their greatest selling tactics. Just lay out an impressive display of product samplings for the costumers to taste, then hand them a basket made of bamboo and let them roam around to taste, smell, and touch the products. Let the curiosity of the costumers be their own impulse to shop. Trust me, it works! Make sure you hand them a giant bamboo basket so that they have this feeling of not shopping too much because their basket keeps looking empty, while actually they bought more items that could fit under the airplane bagage weight restriction.

We bought ~~all~~ most of the items shown on the pics. Nico's fav was the Cocoa tea, which I must admit, it was pretty damn good. However, my fav was the choco-glycerin bar soap. It has this nice sweet and delicious natural smell of chocolate that (almost) made me wanted to eat myself in the most cannibalistic way possible after a shower.

PS: to add to its awesomeness, this shop give free shots of each of their cocoa liquor if you want to taste!

Putri