The Chocolate Bug

摘要

Jim Walsh, on his knees in a pile of rotting vegetation, is admiring a big, red fruit pod that protrudes from the trunk of a very healthy-looking cacao tree. Walsh (who is no relation to me) is the father of the fledgling Hawaiian chocolate industry, and he is very fond of this particular cacao plantation high in the mountains above the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. The ten- to fifteen-foot-high cacao trees look like shrubs beside the towering macadamia nut trees in the adjacent orchard. The Hodge's Estate, as this plantation is known, used to grow only coffee and macadamia nuts.