Wednesday, March 11 - CONACADO and Sightseeing in Santo Domingo, the DR

Some of us got up early this morning to catch the sunrise on the Santo Domingo waterfront.

Just before sunrise in Santo Domingo.

After a buffet breakfast on the roof of our hotel, we piled into 2 taxis and found our way to the CONACADA office in Santo Domingo. There we were greeted by Abel Fernandez, Gerente de Exportacion (Export Manager). Abel gave us an overview of their operations. More can be learned about CONACADO on their website at: http://www.conacado.com.do/ 

Equal Exchange, one of CONACADO's fair trade customers describes them like this:

"The National Confederation of Dominican Cacao Producers (CONACADO) is an organization of small-scale cacao producers in the Dominican Republic. CONACADO began as a development project in 1985 during a low in the global cocoa market, to study how cacao fermentation techniques could improve the quality of cacao production in the Dominican Republic. After successfully proving that higher quality, fermented cacao could increase income to small farmers, CONACADO expanded its work to educate cacao farmers and organize them into "bloques" – associations of farmers in a particular geographic area. CONACADO then entered a commercialization phase of the project and focused on finding niche markets for their high quality cacao."

Abel explained that today CONACADO represents more than 10,000 cacao farmers in 7 districts of the DR. Farmers own, on average, less than 2.5 hectares of land. Total production is about 16,000 metric tons of cacao beans per year. Over the years, quality of cacao and production yields have gone up considerably and farmers are receiving premium prices for their cacao and earning far more money from their farms. In addition, farmer co-ops receive a fair trade premium for all the fair trade beans that they sell. Last year the fair trade premium was $1.6 million and the money was used to provide training, improve education for farm families, build irrigation aqueducts and a variety of other projects carried out by the farmer co-ops together with CONACADO. 

Tomorrow we will visit cacao farmers in Hato Mayor, a district that is about 1.5 hours by car from Santo Domingo. We will have more to report after our visit with farmers tomorrow. 

In the CONACADO office, sporting the new hats given to us by Abel Fernadez.

After our CONACADO visit, we walked down to old town Santo Domingo and ended up at the Mimosa Restaurant for lunch.

Francisco, our waiter at Mimosa, helping us decide what to order - delicious!

After lunch, Ebie led us on an informative walking tour of old town Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo was established by Christopher Columbus when he was governor of the 'new' lands he had recently 'discovered'. Some buildings still date back to the early 1500's - probably the oldest colonial buildings in the Western Hemisphere. 

Ebie leading us on our tour of Old Town.

Catholic semiary building that dates back to the 1500's.

Lantern on seminary wall.

View down a street in old town Santo Domingo.

Colorful residential alley in old town.

Interior of the cathedral in old town.

Stained glass window in cathedral.

Same window, different lighting.

Large, ornately carved altar at the front of the cathedral.

Virgin Mary in center of altar.

Statue of Christopher Columbus, adorned by pigeons, in front of the cathedral.

Columbus pointing the way to the 'new world'.

Orchids growing in a city park.

Fortress in old town Santo Domingo. 

Kelly, Ebie and Connor looking out from the top of the fort.

Kelly, Connor, Charlie, Jean and Ginny on top of the fort.

The fort was constructed by using local stone and blocks of coral.

You can see the porous blocks of coral that make up this arched doorway in the fort. 

 Later in the afternoon it began to rain so we ducked into a nearby restaurant, discovered they have a 2 for 1 happy hour and stayed for pizza.

The brightly painted restaurant was Mexican and called the Zorro.

We celebrated Kevin's birthday with a cake provided by the Zorro folks.

A good time was had by all. Thank you, Kevin, for celebrating your birthday with us in Santo Domingo.

Tomorrow we will travel with CONACADO to Hato Mayor district to visit some cacao farmers and learn more about how cacao is grown, harvested and processed.