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THE CHOCOLATE, DIVINE DRINKING THAT CONQUERED TO EUROPE

Take from: http://www.nationalgeographic.com.es/historia/grandes-reportajes/el-chocolate-la-bebida-divina-que-conquisto-europa_8139/2

Take from: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/chocolate-640x330.jpg

Despite of mistrusts initials, in XVII century the chocolate was converted in the fashion drinking of the society high Europe.

In April 30^th of 1502, Cristobal Colón got out, one more time, of Seville’s port. His main idea was found a maritime passage, from Middle America; he takes it, to end, to Asia. It was his four travels to new world, and the route had difficulties. One day, in the middle of a storm, the navigator and his men were forced to disembark. Apparently, they intercepted then a Maya embarkation that arrived as a load of almonds that Colón doesn't gave importance. Without he knows it, the admiral had had the first contact with the seeds of cacao tree.

More than twenty hundred years later, Madrid eats more of five tons of chocolate for year. According with the chronicles of moment, in the capital didn't have some street that it doesn't sell it. This can illustrate that a bad beginning doesn't always is determinant, as the chocolate is obtained of almonds that Colon had cull.

We don’t know which was the first contact between the Spanish and chocolate, because it consumed by Mayans and Aztecs, but who this product was very important. The Mayans left written the first references of story and consume in the denominate Madrid codex, it's conserved in the American's Museum. For other part, the Aztecs thought that the seeds of that obtained the chocolate wasn't but materialization of Quetzalcoatl, god of wisdom.

FROM TENOCHTITLÁN TO MADRID

Such important was the cacao for Aztecs that they utilized the almonds as coins. Pedro Mártir from Anglería, Indians chronicler, he said respect: "They used the coins, don't from metal, but of nutlets from certain trees, like almonds". For we understand better the changes realized in the Aztecs word, the Spanish developed an equivalence tables. Thanks to them, we know that one hare paid in cacao coasted like the prostitute service.

The beginning, the Spanish showed rejection for chocolate; so that, according the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, the lips stayed as stained from blood after drinking it. Apart of them, its taste bitter and spicy didn't finish to convince. Girolamo Benzoni, en his history of mondo nuovo, he came to express that "the chocolate seemed more good a drinking for pigs that be consumed for humanity". Nevertheless, in the century XVI arrived to Spain and it was presented to Carlos V by Hernán Cortés. Starting that's moment, the acceptance of it would go increase, to get reach quotas high.

TRIUMPH OF CHOCOLATE

Precisely in the century XVIII, to serve a hot chocolate like a drink arrived to take part essential of "entertainment", the ritual followed in the snacks that the noble offered in your visits. Usually, accompanied the biscuits and other candies with dipping. If snacks to celebrate the winter, the normal was be taken it the heat of the braziers, on the podiums of the living room, between pillows and tapestries. If the chocolate starred a snacks summer, used to serve together a "snow bowl", a glass of ice cream.

Since the chocolate was consumed very thick, the stains that produce were very annoying. But, one day in 1640, to Don Pedro Álvarez de Toledo and Leiva, viceroy of Perú and marquis of Mancera, it's came a solution. He invented a container that consist a little tray with center brace, in the left holding jícare, small cup without handle in which inside poured the chocolate. In the honor of his author, the tray would be baptized like mancerina. According with the level who server the snackes, the mancerinas could be in silver, of porcelain or clay.

THE FASHION ARRIVES TO VERSAILLES

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The consumption of chocolate in Spain knew a wide dissemination a long of all the century XVII and announced in the candy store like the "drink to proceed of India". The habit of drinking chocolate was so extent that even for ladies of nobility it did serviced a middle of long and boring sermons Ecclesiastes. The bishops, offended, banned this way to consumption.

Soon, rest of Europe, about all France, adopted this sweet traditional. One of the responsible was Ana of Austria, daughter of Felipe III, who exported the custom of snacks and breakfast after a wedding with Luis XIII. María Teresa of Austria, daughter of Felipe IV, secured this practice to take chocolate of usual way in a new country.

When the Borbones arrived to Spain was showed very fans to chocolate. Especially, Felipe V and their son Carlos III, who they used breakfast with this drink. It was precisely Carlos III, in his eagerness for created an industry that sit the foundation of economic development of country, who allowed the exclusive exchange and in regime of monopoly between Madrid and the Captaincy Real General of Venezuela. Through of centralized systems that characterize their reign, the monarch created a institution responsible to management the commerce, the call Company Real Guipuzcoana of Caracas. The product arrived to tables Spanish through of stores of groceries.

MASTERS OF CHOCOLATE

The preparation of the product than then it was consumed, it was responsibility of grinder. He ran the country with a curved stone on the back. Continued the denominated technique of metate, that consist in grinding, kneeling, and on about mentioned stone, the seeds of cacao. Little bit to little bit, and with a lot effort, quarried a ground liquid and uniform, it knew as paste of cacao.

The jurist Valencia Marcos Antonio Orellana talks about them in this poem: "Oh, divine chocolate/ kneeling you grind it/ the hands folded you bat/ and eyes to sky drinking" 

All change from century XIX, when the technique of Industrial Revolution favors more the consumer and they cheapened their cost. Soon, the tea and the coffee were moving the chocolate that began to associate with revelers and night owls. Away they were the days in the considered the divine character, as left write Valle - Inclán: "Cacao is a language of Anahuac/ is break of gods, Cacahuac"

Translated by: Lina González

Madagascar, the huge island in the Indian oceán.

Translated by: Yudy Aristizábal

In Africa the leaves, fruits and seeds of baobab are used as food, cosmetic product and to mitigate the effects of malaria.Walking this paradise of giant trees, unique animals and coral beachesI went to Madagascar to admire the baobabs of Morondava, but I found an island 1,600 kilometers long that  I love for its varied landscapes: paddy fields, lush vegetation, animals as curious as lemurs and magnificent beaches south and north. 

In Madagascar almost all it starts in the capital, Antananarivo (Tana for friends), a noisy city that spreads by 18 hills, with street markets, a lake and a palace. 

In Tana I became familiar with the local currency, the ariary, I learned that rice is the staple food and rented, with my friend Patrick, a French guide who has spent years on the island, an SUV to go to Morondava.

Tana Leaving everything changes. The urban chaos is diluted and overlook the Highlands, a green landscape of rolling hills, red soil and paddy fields. "The mix of Africa and Asia in the landscape because the Indonesian island peopled" tells me Patrick. We passed many Taxi, minibuses loaded in excess whose drivers risk their lives to earn a few minutes.In Antsirabe, 160km south of Tana, the pousse-pousses (carts pulled by a man) confirm the  Asian vocation  of the island. Here the road is diverted to Morondava through a landscape where meadows where grazing zebu alternate with sugar cane plantations and forests depleted illustrating deforestation of the island. A mouthwatering samosas (typical South Asian dumplings) are lunch at one of the many stops next to the road.Shortly before the first baobabs Morondava appear, reigning over the rice fields. They are the type Adansonia grandidieri, reaching 30 meters high. Baobabs only grow in Africa and the west coast of Australia, but in Madagascar live up to seven species. Hence to be known as "the mother island of baobabs," although the British writer Gerald Durrell (1925-1995) preferred fauna, whose protection is still devotes Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.Just at the entrance of Morondava a poster announces the school Le Petit Prince with a drawing of the Prince de Saint-Exupery. Beyond, a dusty streets and a beach battered by cyclones in Morondava become a helpless population. When evening falls we approach the so-called Avenue of the Baobabs near the city. 

The slanting light of evening shadows lengthen and beautifies the red trunks, while a cart moving on the road. "I came from Tokyo just to see this," confesses me a Japanese with tears of emotion. A few steps, a few baobabs entwine their trunks: the tree lovers.About 200 kilometers north of Morondava is the Tsingy Bemaraha Park. It's like an enchanted forest of stone, with sharp limestone pinnacles that also populate the reserve of Ankarana in the north. Here we must be careful with the fady, the malgache word for tabú and indicating, for example, you should never point a tomb with your finger.Madagascar is a large island learn as you go devouring kilometers. In my journey south, herds of zebu and Malagasy shepherds, wrapped in colorful blankets, foreshadow the arrival in Ambositra. 

In this city jams pousse-pousses are repeated, but there is also a special agitation as Savika parties are held. We followed the crowd to a stadium where young people compete trying to mount threatening zebu horns.

A few kilometers away, around Fianarantsoa they are an ideal place for trekking through rice fields and villages minimal field. But it is in the gorges of Isalo park with lakes and waterfalls, where the view of the ringed lemurs brings me back to Madagascar  dreamed. Improvised settlements seekers sapphires, fever Madagascan gold, preceding later the return of baobabs in the region Tulear, a population that has sandy beaches and restaurants serving steak flavored zebu with spices on the island especially vanilla.A few days later we flew north to the island of Nosy Be, where tropical vegetation surrounds beaches where fish, lobster and black coral . On the east coast of Madagascar there is a similar paradise in Sainte-Marie island with palm fringed beaches and crystal waters.Back on land, we follow the north coast by taxi-brousse to Diego Suarez, a city which left its mark French colonial presence. It was here that pirates founded in the seventeenth century, the utopian republic of Libertalia. "The spoils were divided equally," Patrick tells me, "but did not have the local population. One day Madagascans down the mountains and ended with everyone and everything." Long ago there is nothing of that ephemeral pirate republic, but on the main street of Diego Suarez a painted recalls the utopia that reigned in the north of this island dream.

Source: http://www.nationalgeographic.com.es/articulo/viajes/grandes_viajes/9413/madagascar_gran_isla_del_indico.html