Description: Who said that all museums are boring? Kakaw is devoted to the culture of cacao (the origin of chocolate), it has all the elements needed for a museum: old artifacts (in this case just replicas), pieces of info from ancient cultures, displays of pots written in ancient language, etc. but all relates to cacao, from it's botanical introduction to how the Mayas revered and used the beans. The end of the visit is a bonus.
As all museums, it begins by introducing you to history and biology, geography and religion, but if you are here for the chocolate only, all the information is relevant and interesting to make you understand the origin and importance of cacao along history. For example there is a nice display that shows the value of cacao beans in the pre-Columbian era, 20 cacao beans to buy one rabbit, 4,000 to buy a slave, 125,000 to buy a necklace made of jade.
The museum is small, an old house adapted around a central patio, but all the reproductions are of high quality and enhanced to make your visit more pleasant, you dont' have to guess what was in a carving already eroded by time, the colors are vivid and the traces clear. If you like Mayan culture a bit, this will be an amazing visit and very worth as you can find artifacts from not only Chiapas, but also from Guatemala and Honduras, the whole Maya zone.
There are some videos and personnel to help you in your visit, but the informative cards are very well written and requiere only additional info if you are really interested in Mayan culture. Unfortunately they are only written in Spanish.
At the end of the visit you can buy authentic chocolates and cakes, made with organic cacao grown in the state of Chiapas (full description in the "Fabrica de Chocolate" tab in their website), so you local local industries and fair trade business, plus you can also buy some of the reproductions (vases, dishes, small scale replicas of some famous museum artifacts, etc), very high quality but the prices are a bit high for my pocket, but are really master pieces.
It's just one block and a half from the Main Plaza (cathedral) so don't miss it.
http://www.kakaw.org/museo-del-cacao-y-chocolate.html
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