Venezuelan vacation

Chocolate tasting and the rest

Now that's what I call a chocolate tasting

The culmination of the Bukare chocolate tour is an involved tasting session within the hacienda, where chocolate in all its glorious forms is slurped and savoured. Whilst not an experience for calorie counters (even Dr Atkins would take a dim view), for me this is the highlight of the day.

Numerous slabs of rich cocoa are washed down with Bukare's signature chocolate drink. Raw cocoa beans are chewed, fragrant cocoa butter sampled, and dishes of fresh mango with chocolate are wheeled out from the kitchen. At the end of the tasting session, when the other guests leave, Billy makes me an offer I can't refuse

"Catherine. Would you like some more chocolate?"

And with the camaraderie of co-conspirators, we sip coffee sweetened with a thick spoon of chocolate, and polish off the remains of the tasting session.

If you can drag yourself away from the chocolate

There is plenty to do in Paria besides eat chocolate, with thermal springs, beaches and buffalo ranches to tempt guests away from the plantations. The beaches are thought to be some of the best in the world, and certainly the most exalted in Venezuela. And the thermal-spas are a great way to relax even further into the south-American pace of life. But as a guest at the hacienda I am also party to the daily chocolate innovations, which leaves me quite content to laze in a hammock, tasting yet another variant of chocolate mango. Call me unimaginative, but I did come here to eat chocolate. Perhaps there's room for Bridget Jones after all.