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The river-rats of the Rio, the people that are here for more then 10 years, they all have double names. Chocolate Bob is one of those.

Het came 25 years ago to Guatemala.
Originally from the USA he started traveling. First to France, then to Marocco to end up in Guatemala finally. He came with his girlfriend.

"You have to feed your girlfriend and I didn’t have any money left. I was completely without cash.
My girlfriend is just a skinny girl but she can eat. I had to feed her. So I started to fumble around with Chocolate, Cocos and honey. I made some dessert sweeties.
I packed them in a carton and walked to the nearest village, Panajachel. When I came there, the chocolate was melting and I was desperate. I walked straight to a friend of mine that had a restaurant in Panajachel. It was called ‘El Chisme’.
I asked if I could put my chocolates in his fridge. He opened it and there was absolutely no space to put one chocolate in there, the whole carton would never fit.
May I try one, he asked.
Hmm, really nice.
You know what. I will try to sell them to the people that have dinner here. Maybe I can help you out.

In the evening I came back. I didn’t see any presentation of my chocolates. I was very disappointed and asked my friend the restaurant-owner what he did with my chocolates. They were nowhere to be seen.
He put a wad of bills out if his pocket. ‘I sold them all. Bring me twice as much tomorrow’.

That is how it started. I started to deliver to more restaurants. Then I opened a chocolate shop in Panajachel. What a lot of work that was. But it got my girl fed.

I don’t do chocolate any more. I’ve got this jewelry-production right now. Much more profitable. But if you want to do it, I will give you some advice…."

The other day I bumped into English-Steve.
"Yeah, I know Chocolate Bob. When I had the restaurant in Backpackers he used to come in sometimes. Started to do things in the kitchen and after half an hour he had a batch of chocolate-mousse ready. Everytime he did that we had it on the menu that night and it always was sold out completely.
He is a character, isn’t he?"

This entry was posted on Friday, February 25th, 2005 at 19:01 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.