CHOCOLATE, COFFEE and MAMAJUANA
Chocolate and coffee (we consider Dominican coffee to taste better
than Hawaiian or Costa Rican) are two of the principal cash crops.
Cacao pods from which cocoa is extracted
and coffee beans.
Cacao beans and fresh ground cocoa which
is bitter, but very chocolatey.
Mamajuana is a drink made from roots
and bark soaked in red wine, rum and
honey. Dominicans sometimes call it "Dominican
Viagra" and it is purported to cure
everything from acne and indigestion to
hemorrhoids. It usually comes in a square bottle
which supposedly can be refilled with
the fluids repeatedly for 15 years. Young men
working at the resorts 18 hours per day
swear that Mamajuana enables them
to work the long hours with little or
no sleep.
This is our guide Luis peddling Mamajuana
from a roadside stand.
This young man rolls cigars for tourists
