Cook, Taste, Discover: Local Flavor & Chocolate Farm Combo
Make a traditional Costa Rican lunch from scratch in the morning, then tour the organic cacao, vanilla and coffee farm right next door. Lunch, wine, and snacks all included.
* Rack rates before Costa Rica's 13% VAT. Includes hotel pickup from Manuel Antonio. Minimum 2 people. Book now, pay at the farm.
The combo experience
Both tours happen on the same private ranch in Londres, about 40 minutes from Quepos. That's what makes the combo feel natural rather than rushed. In the morning, you're in the kitchen and the garden, cooking with local ingredients. By early afternoon, you're a few hundred meters away in the same property's organic garden, learning how cacao becomes chocolate and how vanilla goes from an orchid flower to the ingredient in your pantry. Same farm, same bilingual guide, one very full day.
The cooking session and the farm tour are genuinely different experiences. The kitchen is warm, social, and hands-on in a way that keeps everyone engaged, whether you cook regularly at home or have never touched a tortilla press. The cacao walk is more contemplative: you're walking through the garden, asking questions, tasting things at each stop. Both halves work well for families with kids, couples, and mixed groups.
You eat the lunch you cooked together, sitting at the farm's open-air dining area. An organic glass of wine from the property is included. By the time you board the van back to Manuel Antonio in the late afternoon, you've spent eight hours learning where Costa Rican food actually comes from, from the garden row to the finished plate.
You can also take each experience on its own: the Local Flavor Cooking Experience and the Chocolate, Vanilla & Coffee Tour both run as standalone tours from Manuel Antonio. The combo bundles them into one pickup and one full day at the same property.
Part 1: Cook a real Costa Rican lunch
Your driver collects you from your hotel at 8:00 AM. The drive to Londres takes about 40 minutes, long enough for your guide to fill you in on the region: the agricultural history of the Central Pacific, what grew here before tourism, how the local families who work at the farm learned to cook. It sets up what you're about to do in a way that makes the experience feel less like a class and more like a visit.
At the ranch, the morning begins with a walk through the organic garden. You're picking fresh herbs, peppers, and aromatics that will go directly into the meal. The cooks will point out what each plant is and how it's used in Costa Rican cuisine. It's unhurried, and the garden is worth taking slowly.
Then comes the cooking. The local team guides you through the whole lunch: corn tortillas shaped by hand on a comal, ceviche made with exotic local fruits like plantain or banana in place of the usual chips, rice cooked the traditional way in a clay pot, chicken slow-simmered in a rich tomato sauce, and picadillos loaded with minced meats, vegetables, and a mix of spices that you won't find in a jar. You do the actual work. The cooks show you the techniques and answer every question.
You sit down to eat the meal you just made together. Vegetarian versions of each dish are available if you let us know when you book. An organic glass of wine from the farm is poured. After lunch, most people wander out to meet the farm animals: rabbits, goats, ponies, horses, sheep, and chickens. The kids will want to stay. Adults often will too.
Part 2: From cacao bean to chocolate bar
After the meal, your guide leads you into the organic garden section of the ranch where cacao, vanilla and coffee all grow in close proximity. The property is small enough to feel personal and large enough to show the full growing cycle of each crop.
The cacao section tends to be where people slow down the most. You see the pods directly on the tree trunks, cut one open, and taste the raw white pulp inside. It's sweet, slightly citrusy, and nothing like chocolate. That gap between the raw pod and the finished bar is what the tour explains: fermentation, drying in the sun, roasting, and grinding, each step with its own smell and texture. You understand, concretely, why single-origin chocolate costs what it costs.
Vanilla comes next. The plants grow as orchid vines, climbing poles throughout the garden. Your guide covers hand-pollination, which happens flower by flower because the native bee that did the job in the wild no longer exists in this region, and the months-long curing process that transforms a green pod into the dark, aromatic ingredient you recognize. It's one of those agricultural stories that sticks with you.
Coffee rounds out the tour with the harvest-to-cup chain: picking cherries at peak ripeness, the pulping and drying steps, and how roast levels affect flavor. You taste coffee from the farm's own harvest. Coffee-cacao-vanilla snacks are included along the way.
The van back to Manuel Antonio departs from the farm in the late afternoon. Most groups arrive home by 5:00 PM, sometimes a little earlier. If the farm tour on its own is what you're after, the Chocolate, Vanilla & Coffee Tour runs separately with its own schedule.
What's included
- Round-trip hotel pickup and drop-off from Manuel Antonio
- Certified bilingual guide for the full day
- Guided walk through the organic garden to select fresh ingredients
- Hands-on cooking session with expert local cooks
- Full Costa Rican lunch (the meal you prepared)
- Organic glass of wine from the farm
- Guided tour of the organic cacao, vanilla and coffee garden
- Coffee, cacao and vanilla tastings throughout the afternoon
- Coffee-cacao-vanilla snacks
- Beverages throughout the day
What to bring
- Comfortable clothes you don't mind getting a little flour on
- Camera
- Hat and sunscreen
- Closed shoes or sandals with a back strap for the garden walk
- Cash for tips or any extras
A typical day
- 8:00 AM Hotel pickup from Manuel Antonio
- 40-minute drive to the Londres ranch with your bilingual guide
- Guided walk through the organic garden to pick fresh herbs and aromatics
- Hands-on cooking session: tortillas, ceviche, rice, chicken, picadillos
- Sit-down lunch of the meal you just prepared, with an organic glass of wine
- Meet the farm animals: rabbits, goats, ponies, horses, sheep, chickens
- Guided tour of the organic cacao, vanilla and coffee garden
- Tastings at each stop: raw cacao pulp, farm coffee, spice blends, snacks
- Late afternoon drive back to Manuel Antonio, arriving around 4:30-5:00 PM
Note: The evening PM tour does not operate in May, September, October, or November.
Frequently asked questions
None at all. The local cooks guide you through every step, and the techniques are approachable for anyone, including people who barely use their kitchen at home. The session is more about the experience and the flavors than precision cooking. Kids can participate in most of it too. If your group has a range of comfort levels in the kitchen, that's fine, everyone finds their role naturally.
Yes, genuinely. The recipes are the same ones the farm's kitchen team uses every day, and the ingredients are pulled fresh from the organic garden that morning. Corn tortillas made by hand taste noticeably different from store-bought. The chicken in tomato sauce has been on the farm menu for years for a reason. Most guests say it's one of the better meals they ate in Costa Rica, which says something given how much good food is available around Manuel Antonio.
Yes. The cooking session covers dishes that translate well to vegetarian preparations, and the farm's team knows how to adapt. Just let us know when you book so they can prepare accordingly. The cacao, vanilla and coffee farm tour in the afternoon is entirely plant-based by nature, and the snacks included during that portion are vegetarian as well.
The ranch keeps rabbits, goats, ponies, horses, sheep, and chickens on the property. Most of them are used to visitors and are calm enough to approach. There's a natural pause after lunch when groups tend to wander out to the animal areas before the afternoon garden tour begins. Kids usually spend a good chunk of that time with the goats and rabbits.
It is. The ranch produces a small-batch organic wine using fruit grown on the property. It's not a vineyard wine in the European sense, it's a tropical fruit wine made locally. The flavor profile reflects that: lighter, slightly sweet, and interesting rather than serious. One glass is included with lunch. If you'd like more, you can usually purchase a bottle directly from the farm team.
Ready to cook, taste and discover at the farm?
Hotel pickup included. From $150 per person. Book now, pay at the farm.
Prefer just your group? Take this tour private →
