the maranon canyon is home to a wide range of species including and most interesting to us a strain of previously though to be almost extinct. a few years ago the trees were tested at a dna lab and had the rarest forms of cacao in the world, this stuff. don is our cacao connection, a farmer whose family has been working these mountains over 40 years. >> they're absolutely beautiful when they start out. >> really kooky looking pods when they come off the tree. they sort of look like someone glued them to the side of a tree. this is a once a year crop? >> it grows continuously but this is a peak seasons. >> try that. put one in your mouth. bite it and see the nibs inside? >> where does chocolate come from? >> the bean. okay. here's where chocolate comes from. the trees produce pods. you split open the pods and take out the beans. the buyer sun drys the beans, then roasts them. after roasting, the beans are extracted from their shells and ground up, producing chocolate liqueur. mix this concentrate with milk, sugar, cacao butter and you get what we call commercial chocolate. our chocolate