Addicted to Chocolate and Motorcycling? Here are Five Places in Ecuador That Satisfy.

Five Places Chocolate Lovers Should Visit on a Motorcycle or 4x4 Adventure in Ecuador

Ecuador gives you plenty of reasons to keep riding: high Andean passes, twisting roads through the cloudforest, remote Pacific beaches, jungle tracks, volcanoes, and small towns where stopping for lunch can turn into an hour-long conversation.

Then there is the chocolate.

Cacao grows across several of Ecuador's dramatically different regions, and the places where it is cultivated happen to be some of the most interesting places to explore by motorcycle or 4x4.

Ecuador has a long cacao tradition, from ancient Amazonian cultivation to the Nacional variety that helped make Ecuadorian cacao famous among European chocolate makers. Criollo, Trinitario, and Amazonian cacao are also grown here, and today small producers, cooperatives, and internationally known brands are keeping that tradition alive.

For riders, that means chocolate can become part of the route instead of something you pick up at the airport on the way home.

Here are five places where motorcycles, Ecuadorian landscapes, and serious chocolate come together.

Mindo — Yumbos Chocolate

Mindo sits about two hours northwest of Quito, where the Andes begin dropping toward Ecuador's coastal lowlands. The ride alone is worth the trip: mountain curves, thick vegetation, waterfalls, mist, and plenty of smaller roads begging to be explored.

This is cloudforest country, part of the Chocó region that stretches north into Colombia. The combination of altitude, rainfall, and tropical vegetation creates extraordinary biodiversity and excellent growing conditions for cacao.

Mindo is best known for birds, waterfalls, and weekend escapes from Quito, but it also has a strong chocolate connection.

Just off the town's main square, Yumbos Chocolate takes visitors through the process from cacao fruit to finished chocolate. Their tours cover harvesting, fermentation, roasting, grinding, and tasting, with the inevitable stop at the shop afterward.

Our one-day Chocolate and Cloudforest self-guided tour visits Yumbos along with several other stops in the region.

Mashpi Chocolate

West of Mindo, the roads become quieter and the forest thicker as you head toward the Mashpi region.

Here, Alejandro Solano and Agustina run a cacao farm surrounded by cloudforest. Alejandro is also an accomplished birder, able to pick out species by their calls long before most visitors know where to look.

The farm grows Nacional cacao and produces Mashpi artisanal chocolate. The cacao trees grow beneath the forest canopy, and the farm combines chocolate production with habitat conservation.

That connection between farming and forest is what makes Mashpi worth visiting. You are seeing where the cacao grows, how it is processed, and how a working farm can coexist with the surrounding ecosystem.

A visit to the farm is included in Ecuador Freedom's Offroad Pacific Discovery tour.

Manabí — To'ak Chocolate

Continue west toward Manabí and the landscape changes again. The cool, wet cloudforest gives way to warmer hills, tropical vegetation, palms, and eventually the Pacific.

Ecuadorian cacao was highly prized by European chocolate makers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the Nacional variety becoming especially famous. Disease devastated much of the crop in the early twentieth century, and surviving trees were often crossed with more resistant varieties.

The founders of To'ak Chocolate later found old Nacional cacao trees while developing a conservation project in Manabí. Their work became the foundation for a company devoted to producing small-batch Ecuadorian chocolate from carefully selected cacao.

Visiting cacao country in Manabí gives you a chance to see the landscape behind the finished bar: the farms, fermentation, drying, roasting, and the growers who have spent years improving both quality and production.

To'ak also offers a chocolate and art experience in Quito, making it an easy addition before or after a motorcycle trip.

Tena — Pacari and Kallari Chocolate

Tena is one of Ecuador's gateways to the Amazon basin. From the Andes, the road drops through changing vegetation and warmer air until the mountains begin giving way to jungle.

Pacari

Near Tena, the Kichwa community of Santa Rita grows cacao used by Pacari. Families tend cacao trees and work with the company to improve cultivation and processing while producing beans with distinctive regional flavors.

The visit goes well beyond eating chocolate. Guests can learn how cacao is grown, walk through the farm, and take part in preparing chocolate using traditional tools and methods.

Along the way, there are also petroglyphs dating back centuries and the opportunity to spend time in a working Kichwa community rather than simply passing through the Amazon as a visitor.

A visit can be added to our self-guided Avenue of Volcanoes, Quilotoa Loop & Amazon Basin Tour.

Kallari Chocolate

Kallari is a cooperative made up of hundreds of Kichwa families in the Amazon basin. Together they grow cacao and produce chocolate sold both in Ecuador and internationally.

Their chocolate includes flavors such as chili, lemongrass, ginger, cinnamon, and banana, ingredients that make perfect sense once you have spent time in the Amazon and seen what grows there.

Tours around Tena introduce visitors to cacao cultivation and chocolate production. In Quito, Kallari Café offers an easier way to sample the cooperative's chocolate, desserts, and traditional Amazonian ingredients.

Kallari also produces guayusa, a traditional Amazonian tea widely consumed in the region.

A Kallari visit can be added to our self-guided Andes, Amazon & Pacific Tour.

Salinas de Guaranda — El Salinerito

Ecuador has several places named Salinas, but this one sits high in the Andes above Guaranda.

Salinas de Guaranda is known for a community-run cooperative system that produces chocolate, cheese, and other local products. The village also has a long history of salt production, visible in the surrounding salt flats.

El Salinerito is the name behind both the chocolate and cheese produced here. Factory visits give you a look at how each is made, and the local shops make it difficult to leave without adding something to the luggage.

The ride into Salinas is part of the experience. You climb into high Andean country on increasingly quiet roads, with broad mountain views and a completely different landscape from the cacao-growing lowlands.

We visit Salinas and its chocolate-making facilities on several Ecuador Freedom routes, including the guided High Andes, Deep Amazon tour and the Cloudforest, Coast & Craters self-guided tour.

Chocolate Makes a Good Excuse to Explore Ecuador

The flavor of Ecuadorian chocolate begins with where the cacao grows: the soil, rainfall, elevation, shade, temperature, fermentation, and the people who cultivate and process the beans.

For travelers, cacao also provides a reason to leave the main highway. The best experiences happen on farms, in small communities, along mountain roads, and in places where chocolate is still connected directly to the land where it began.

If you want to build a motorcycle or 4x4 adventure around some of these stops, contact us and we can help you put together a route through Ecuador's cacao country.