Okay, it's Monday morning, the day of the Big Oaker, a police sting operation on the trunky dodcalfeeves.

So I'm gonna walk out to stretch of roadside where the bikes stand to park, and we'll see what's happening, if there are any cacalfee is operating today, and if the police are doing anything more soon.

So funny story, it's and I'm in Bolivia at try and Kila Dad Volker Lehman's Wild Cows Day in the Jungle, Good morning.

I have not slept that deeply in years, I think, did you?

It's crazy dreams, crazy dreams, crazy dreams.

Yes, Vulcar's back.

He burned out on cocao and left the country bankrupt and bitter, but he couldn't stand to stay away any longer.

The game had changed and for the better.

The new wave of craft chocolate makers was willing to pay more than ever before for really great beans.

The bean too bar movement.

It's more than chocolate making, it's really exploring new horizons.

So he came back to Bolivia with a new plan.

Restore Try and Kilodad, transform it into a state of the art demonstration center for wild cacao and concentrate on quality instead of volume.

That sounded great to me, But there's just one catch.

Actually there's a lot of cats is, but this is the most present.

The situation started developing a few days ago.

Each day, people who live near try and kill a DoD ride their motorbikes into the coca dres and spend the day picking and opening pots.

I try my hand at the harvest to in the afternoon, the pickers ride out and drop off the beans.

Volker weighs the beans on an ancient scale and hands them cash.

Then he and his team sort through the slurpy beans, kicking out it's gunk, and begin the long process of fermenting and drying.

Have you done for pod?

No perquilo herquila?

Yeah?

Beans?

No, but you have to present me a bag with the beans, and then I can tell you how we weigh them and how much do I get pequila?

Um, the quilo will be almost one dollar?

All right?

I think I earned about a dollar.

To oh, I got a dollar.

I timed my visit to coincide with peak Hartist.

But after several days of picking, Bulker isn't liking what he's seeing.

It is scratch will be cloned down.

It's not so easy animal.

He's getting about two kilos of beans per day, and he'd like to be getting twice that.

On a good year, Tranquila Dad can produce about five tons of cacao, and this year is looking super light, even though conditions have been good.

So each day as the light harvest comes in, Bulker gets increasingly quiet, and after a particularly light day, he says, let's go for a ride.

So we hop in his antique truck, Dodge power Wagon, classic and indestructible.

Back before this part of Olivia had rhods, this was how Vulker got his cock out to market, tooling over the grasslands during the dry season in his power wagon, sacks of cocao in back.

Now we take it down the red dirt road a couple of miles to the other side of tran kilodat far from the entrance game.

I wasn't sure why Bulker brought me on this field trip, but now I understand.

Motorbikes are stashed in the weeds all along the barbed wire fence that marks the property line.

The fence is bent open in multiple spots, and from each a well established trail heads into the forest intruders.

But are these guys also getting her kickclfeves they're sneaking into tryan kilodat each day, picking Vulker's cow and carning it off to a competitor.

Vulgar says, it's happened before and he tamped it down, but the problem has flared up again.

So basically, if you if you retaliated and along too or three fours.

Yeah, if I retendiate, they suddenly intenpiating and they are in majority five six.

He hops out of the truck and starts now think photos of the bikes, So I hop out to I just want to keep uh these show.

Yeah.

We briefly float the idea of waiting for the thieves to emerge with the woods red handed, and we quickly rejected.

I cannot come front five young young, young guys getting angry at hell because I I go through the system, I go through the police and ask him please do something till Stephen monca what you're gonna do?

And if you think that is going to be straightforward, well then you haven't been paying attention from Kaleidoscope and i Heeart podcasts.

This is obsessions wild chocolate.

I'm Roman Jacobinson, Chapter seven, The Art of the Deal.

Wow.

I had like Bedlock for at least twelve years.

You don't know.

You know, there's a there's a blues.

You know.

If they weren't Bedlock, I wouldn't have luck at all.

I don't know.

It's morning in Tranquila.

Dad and Vulker and I are supposed to be out in the coal forest, but once again it's boring, So we're hanging in his screenhouse while he tells me why he came back to take one last shot at his masterpiece and maybe even save his favorite place.

I always kept my self contilda.

I always kept it out of you know.

I never mingled it too much into to all of this why right, because it was mine and I wanted to protect it.

When the bankruptcy lawyers were circling like vultures, Try and Kilo DoD was the one thing we managed to keep out of their talents.

Were you worried what it was gonna look like when you got back?

When I came back, I was crying.

I was like, oh, it's I have to start all over again.

When I came here was a paper and and garbage all over the place, and I always terrible.

I was close to sixty a long time for me.

Five years is a long time being sixty, and not because I thought, a yeah, maybe in two years I will retire.

Um.

Then I realized that I have to start again.

And did that seem daunting?

Oh?

Yeah, that was um And and then it creeped into my mind.

And if that fails again, then what what?

And did I achieved?

Now the emotional turmoil and financial misery, there had been some bright spots.

He'd put a brand new idea into the world.

The chocolate had been recognized as some of the best of all time, and the chocolates Halle's.

The wild cow forests were now permanently protected.

Bulker actually helped write the regulations most important of all.

By proving the greatness of wild chocolate, he'd helped to spur a global treasure hunt.

The US was now full of bean to bar chocolate makers eager to get their hands on great beans with unique flavors and prices and sword so he had a new plan.

Instead of chasing forty five tons of beans across half of Bolivia each year like he used to do, he could just make a few times of the most deliciou just pcao imaginable, and that would be enough to keep trying to kill it out a flood.

Last year, I um, I got some money out of savings and I put put it all on Zero's so this better work.

He went for it, spending every sn he had to build a new solar powered fermentation center and to use it to produce the world's most perfectly fermented beans.

So he spun the wheel and prayed Zero would come home.

So there was my last coin.

So I put my last con on it and you and it hit.

Zero explained that yeah, last year I could make ten tons and has sold it for the best price ever.

That set him up for great The fermentation center was paid for.

If he could just make another ten tons this year and sell them at top dollar, he be golden.

Now, normally Volker could do ten tons of cocaw and his sleep, And that's kind of what I thought.

I was showing up for a victory lab of sorts.

To finish my foura into wild chocolate.

We picked a cow, cracks and beers, maybe fry another crocodile.

Instead, things have gone haywire on multiple fronts, which is why instead of a victory lab.

I'm going to spend a lot of this episode sucking dust on Bolivia's horrendous back roads, chasing new supplies for starters.

There's the cocao that's disappearing out the back of Try and Kilodat.

Volker was counting on Try and Kilodat for four or five tons, and now it looks like he'll be likely to make two.

Normally that wouldn't be a problem either.

Wolker used to source fifteen tons a year from the other chocolate Talis and Bowres.

But what I suggest that we just go hit up his old contacts, He says, Actually it's complicated.

The town council and Bowres just passed a new law banning anyone ouse side of the town from buying fresh bow raised beams.

And Try and Kiloda is just across the river in the town of Wakaraje, so he's been cut off.

At first, that didn't make any sense to me.

Why would they cut off their number one buyer?

And when I prod Vulcar, he kind of hems and haws.

But then as we're driving to Wakarraje, he confesses I am actually the the person who triggered it because I was in this chat group in What's Up.

It was a technical group of Bolivian cocau professionals, and if you've ever been a part of a chat group, you know there's always somebody who asked to stare at the pot.

And in this group you can probably guess who that somebody was.

I posted photos all almost green pots, and I I wrote, um, you know, this is how it is when there is no control.

Basically, he had new competitors that were buying cacao that wasn't even ripe yet, and so the KO was getting harvested too early, which was screwing things up for people who were waiting to buy until it was ripe.

People like him now.

And I made a comment, you know, fifteen years of you now working with mngos and everything and nothing, you know, no control nor no organization about it.

They got this, he bet they did.

He just publicly flamed the proudest cacao town o Bolivia for having terrible quality control and in apt management.

Sometimes Hebrew spites back.

And then a lady said in the in the chet group, I will make sure that this guy will not get any means out of bowders.

Yeah, So in a matter of days his two main sources of cacao have evaporated and the season is moving along fast.

So instead of peacefully picking to cow pods in the forest, I find myself riding shotgun in Vulgar's land cruiser as we rack up the miles tunneling back into a cow underground and his own paths.

I mean.

The first buyer we visit in Wakaraya used to sell the vulcar years ago, but he says he doesn't think there's a bunch of cacao out there this year.

The season is a bit of a dud.

Yikes.

But our next stop, a guy named Ideal who lives out in the sticks, says, no, there's a coo out there.

You just have to know the right people, and Vulkan and I have a strong sense that Ideal is the right people.

And surprise, surprise, After a lot of chip chat, Adil says, well, maybe I can set some for you.

It turns out that way way up the Rio Blanco, which is the river that runs past rank kilodad Adeal knows of a village, Little Carmen.

He has relatives there, and he said we can arrange what bean transport where he would do basically the work running up and down the river and bringing the beans with his relatives.

You don't have an idea of what the quantity could be up there, but all probably all you need for your purposes.

I have no idea.

This is why we want the golf and see it ourselves.

After striking out at a few more spots, we passed another kacao agent named Maria, and Volker says it needs beans, and Maria says, yeah, you should talk to my cousin Chino up in a town called bay Vista, Babies the borders this huge forest reserve, and Chino is a park ranger there, and he knows some guys who've been camping out in the forest and picking cacap.

Back in his heyday, Polker actually had a buying station in Baya Vista, so he knows there's a lot of cocao in those forests.

So we get Gino's number, and so after a couple of days of mostly dead ends, Bulker has rustled up two leads, Gino the park ranger in Bay of Vista, and Elk Carman the mystery village in the middle of nowhere.

Frankly, both sound pretty iffy to me, but the future of Tranquilo dot is on the line, so we're going to both.

The first, we need to go to the law and nip this cacao fevery in the bud.

That's after the break.

I want to taste of some real wild chocolate, delicious, nutritious and free of preservatives or moral conundrums.

We got you covered.

Call i escope is joined forces with Louisa Abram and Statler Chocolate to make a special box to go along with this very podcast.

Now you too can sample flavors from the banks of the Amazon without having to fight off jaguars at the Antakontas.

Just visit www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com to order your wild chocolate today link in the show notes.

And how do you want to play this?

You want?

Who do you want to say?

I am to the Philice, No, I'm triving you are I'm here doing a story about kau and Bolivia Inbowras.

All right?

That sounds good.

Honestly, it sounds a little lame to me.

And I can already see my Pulitzer prize slipping away.

But there's no time to bargain.

We've already pulled up to the Wakarige police station, which isn't exactly bustling with activity.

The doors closed and the only thing going on in Wakaraye is a guy on the sidewalk pounding coca leaves on a stump with a mallet beepsh it's easier to have to chew and holdenda.

Police cars off at the other end of the street, so they might be over there.

Do I see if they're in the car afterre so we cruise up to the other side of the plaza.

The police car is empty, but then we spot the policeman around the corner drinking coffee with a friend just hanging you.

The conversation looks cordial, and when Volker gets back in the car, he seems pleased.

Any word, Yeah, he's the inn and he told mean too, he's coming over and we should just wait, which we do and wait and wait some more to kill the time.

I asked Vulcan when the trouble started at Tranquila Dot, and he says, right from the beginning, because the previous owner was never around, so everyone got used to thinking of the land as a common larder and they were happy you know, to a hunt and get the cocou get the wood they wanted.

Yeah, so you think you think there was some resentment in the community.

Um when you put up the fence, yeah, Um, you know, everything was easy, you know, and all of a sudden somebody said, no, no, it stops.

Um, the guy is not coming.

I'm I'm really I'm really getting no tired it it bothers made the police in come.

It really what about?

Oh no, no, no, I think I see right as is added.

But I'm gonna remain open to all possibilities.

Well, we agreed tomorrow afternoon.

He's busy, he's busy chatting with me, So we have to wait till tomorrow for an official audience with the cops.

But in the meantime, we're off to Bay A Vista to track down this gino dude, Maria's gas.

It's four bone rattling hours and Vulgar's land cruiser and the only breaks are a couple of tiny settlements we passed through.

At each we turn off the quote unquote main road and cruise the back streets, peering into yards looking for hanging bags of beans or tarp spread out with drawing ones to be it smacks of desperation.

The vulgar says, it's all about laying the groundwork.

I buy a call from this area every year a little bit.

All of a sudden, somebody pops up and says, I got some call.

What you'd like to buy for me?

It's pretty much a drive through.

But if you see sometimes you'll seek a cow.

Then I would stop and ask, and the um make a chat and asking questions, and sometimes it's it's like, oh, yeah, I have a cousin and he has already need some bags.

When don't I see the color and the smell right away?

It tells me if it's interesting enough to dig keeper and make a cutting test and chew on it or you know, and then yeah, little by little I might be interested.

Don't buy or not or straight poker doesn't see anything he likes.

And in a couple of brutally bumpy hours we hit Bay of Vista and wow.

True to its name, Bay of Vista is up on a ridge overlooking the confluence of two rivers, and it's stunning.

A huge sweep of velopty water, double decker riverboats, kids playing in the shallows, a graceful church.

There's a fiesta under way and everyone is partying.

That's really beautiful, like a piece of arya.

Po Bulker peels off to work as connections while I explore the river and swim with the kids.

We meet up at sunset at a bandstand looking over the river.

There's an actual band playing a Hallmark sky and I'm ready to move to Da Vista.

Did you manage to hook up with your contact?

Yeah, tomorrow, I'm we're going to have a look at his place at ten about ah.

His name is Chino, that's his nickname, of course, hopey.

He wants the opportunity, opportunity and see what comes.

So I take the risk giving him some money and see first why what he's doing with all giving a shop?

Yeah, focus shrugs, looks at the sunset and cracks of here.

He doesn't look enthusiastic.

Um, yeah, I mean if there's a lot of a cow here and no one's doing it, this could be people, potentially a lot, like a significant amount coming out of here.

I know the potential here because I worked here over ten years and I know what what is possible.

But that isn't that has to be dicked out again, basically coming starting again.

You know, like like years before they have.

Vista had been really good for Bulker for a few years, but then it collapsed and the culprit was the same old nemesis he's been battling in one way or another for thirty years.

It's a hot spot for cocaine smoke.

This is an acocle spoilt You know why why here?

Yeah, because it's from here.

It's pretty close to the Brazilian border, so they fly in the stuff and then they ship it down the river to Brazil.

I know that many people here got involved and got money.

And that's easy money for a young kids just working very a couple of weeks with these guys getting maybe a thousand dollars.

Yeah, that's a lot of money, Easier than brazil nuts.

Definitely.

I'm getting deep ye at last, I'm starting to understand the weird dance between coca and coca.

The drug trade is like an Amazonian river, always shifting, jumping its banks and finding a new path.

And when that path flows through a town like Baya Vista, everything else suffers.

No one wants to harvest coca or rubber for small change.

But then after a few years, the smuggling ships somewhere else, and the cacao is still there.

Bulker has to hope that the cocaine trade in Baya Vista has dried up long enough to give cacao new life.

And when we ring Gina the next morning, it sounds good.

We're on.

Yeah, he's coming, he's coming, he's coming coming here and with his multi party.

So then and then we followed him to see his plays, his plays.

All right, it sounds like it's all coming together.

Maybe no, yeah, you're never worried.

No, no, not too much.

Already, I've done it so many times.

It's like rehearsal the same plane and no Shakespeare Macbeth, no, five times on.

Yeah, but this performance turns out to be Les Macbeth and more waiting for good.

Oh, but the guy doesn't show up.

So but I'm leaving.

We're just leaving, that's it.

So but in the nicktime, Gino calls, so now he's coming, Now he's after.

Finally Gino rolls up on his bike.

He's a young guy, blurry eyed but eager, and he leads us through Bay of Vista to his place near the river.

Gina lives with his parents, his grandparents, his siblings, his wife and his newborn who's lying on the floor and gawking, and everyone we all play with the baby while China and Vulgar get down to brass tacks.

Volcus got his fedora pulled down low over his eyes and his arms crossed, and he's giving off skeptical vibes as he quizzes Gino on his plants.

How does he for mean?

Cacaw?

Where is he gonna do it?

Gino shows Vulcar a paved garage base, and Vulcan nods and approval.

At least it's out of the weather.

Nino's father points across the street to an empty house on a promontory over the river, and Vulkan nod some more.

Afterward, Bulker walks me over there, and once we're alone, his skepticism melts a by this what this place?

Ye?

I'm going I'm going to apply this, yeah, to be your sales entry like warehouse?

Are what?

This will be?

Six thousand dollars?

Right?

And will you make it a house or you'll make it?

Now he's in his own and he's justing a woman who's drying a cow on a tart beside his new warehouse, and he forgets all about me.

He's cutting deals on the spot, and by the time we leave, he's even whittled Chino's father down to five thousand dollars for the house.

This will be my new Harvard Center then for this area.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's always good to show you know that you were here.

This investment would be like ten tho dollars in total, and and ten tho dollar for a very prominent house at the Barranco with view to the river.

It's a no brainer.

It is a no brainer.

And by the time we roll out of Bay of Vista, he's feeling the old magic.

Perhaps his karma has turned after twelve years of bad luck.

At least it certainly seems like it when we swing past the Wakara police station on our way back.

So we agreed to catch catch the guys in fla granted in the forest.

How's that going to happen?

And yeah, he said he would need help.

Yeah, somebody else coming over and helping out.

And then we do an operation and we can good people.

I love it a steak out after the break, I'll admit I've never been on a steak out before, and I'm kind of excited.

The plan is that the police will come on Monday morning and meet us on the dirt road where the thieves are hiding their motorbikes.

Then as the scoundrels come out of the woods with their bags, Pacao, we nail them.

They haven't advised me they can't do it.

Actually, he said that he will tell me that we will let me know if so.

If they don't do anything today, then I would say them that's it.

And then Vulcan's stuns me by saying he's not even going to be there.

He says he has to head up to Baya Vista the same morning to meet with Gino.

He told me the I want to see it, and I'm I'm going to tell him, you know, this is this is what we want and this is what we don't want.

Yeah.

I do a little training with him throughout on the spot.

Well, fine, whatever, but I'm not missing the steak out, so I make my way there on foot.

I have no idea what people will think of this unsupported gringo talking into his tape recorder like Agent Cooper on Twin Peaks.

But I just hope they're not armed.

I walked throughout and here we got We've got bike number one, blue moped and no filth signs of police.

It's pretty quiet, Um, I don't know, it's only what it's like ten thirty.

Maybe they're still working on their second cup of coffee while they wait for the colonel to show up before they launched the big sting.

Anyway, I'm gonna get a photo of the spike and keep going.

See what we see.

It's really quiet out there.

I'm trying to wrap my head around this whole thing.

Did the police ever intend to come?

Did Boker always know they wouldn't, or are they just late.

I'm just about to head home when oh, we got some action.

There's somebody just parked and sneaking under the fence.

It's a woman and she's got dogs with her and she's carrying buckets.

Got a photo.

Oh there's two people here.

Fun cook out, cook out, Hi mucho, And yeah, that's how it goes.

The people are unfazed by my presence and the police never show.

I hang out for about an hour and finally I give up and trudge.

Hum.

Well, that was all very interesting, but I don't know what to make of it.

They definitely didn't look freaked out that I was seeing them.

They're laughing in the woods, dogs are barking.

It's definitely not a secret operation.

These bikes are right on the road.

They certainly don't seem to feel that they're in any Jeffordy at all, and maybe they're not.

Vulker comes back from daya vista baby.

She knows forest friends are delivering more cacao than he toped.

And when I show Vulgar my photos the day, he just drugs it off.

At first, I can't figure out why, but I think I can piece it together.

For one thing, he's just received notice that one of the chocolate makers in the States that uses his beans has just received a big award for the bar and they proudly splashed the word try and kill it Dad across the front of their labels like you would for a great wine estate.

After twenty years of struggle, Bolker's little patch of paradise is achieving landmarks status at last.

And I don't know if that was directly responsible, but now he's got a new idea for his endgame, his swan song in chocolate.

It sounds romantic, but maybe maybe some of some other people take it over and make something similar.

I asked what he means, and he hesitates.

It's clear he hasn't tried out these ideas on anyone yet.

But eventually he speaks, maybe in the future, if it's more and more known, the maybe uh Environmental trust um buys me out and put some money to it to to bring other people in here to continue.

Yeah, that will be great, you know, because it's not for me, not only for me, it's also for all the families here to know who are now involved.

As soon as he says it, it makes total sense to me try and kill it as a destination where people come to learn the craft, to meet the bare people, and to understand the tradition of making wild chocolate.

A kind of center to push the art of chocolate to new heights.

That would make explicit something he's been circling around for years that you can't really be an owner of these trees, just a caretaker.

They were here long before he'd arrived, and with any luck, they'd be here long after he was gone.

But there's another piece to this puzzle, one I know nothing about at the time.

It's that old Amazonian promise of adventure, and helps explain why Bulker wasn't going to fret over a couple of tons of beans from Tranquilodat, remember El Carmen, the mystery village way up the Rio Blanca.

Shortly after I leave Bolivia, the first test batch of beans comes down river to Vulgar and with it information The pickers have been kipping out for weeks way up river where no one ever goes, and what they found was CaCO forests like none they'd ever seen, beautiful pods, countless trees, all growing out of raised forest islands, just like the ones that Tranquilodat, another overgrown human made landscape stretching all the way to the Paraguay border, an area unknown to anyone except for a few drug smugglers.

Focus says, right now he has no time to take on such an expedition, but he could be convinced, because I can tell he's curious, and so am I.

The whole new lost city of a brand new x on the Treasure Man, just dripping cacw and waiting for someone crazy enough or obsessed and enough to try to get there first.

Annie Daker's Wild Chocolate is a Kaleidoscope production with I Heart Podcasts, hosted and reported by me Rohan Jacobson and produced by Shane McKeon at Nice Marmatt Media.

Edited by Kate Osbourne and mangesh Out of Kudor.

Sound design and mixing by Soundboard.

Original music composition by Spencer Stevenson, a k a Botany production help from Baheni Shorty from My Heart.

Our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nicky Eator.

Special thanks to Laura Mayor, Costas, lnos Ozwalash and Aaron Kaffman, Will Pearson, codel Burn, Bob Pittman, Daria Daniel and the team at Stetler who are helping us make a very special chocolate of our own.

That's right, We're working with Louisa and others to protect the rainforest and make delicious Amazonian chocolate.

Visit www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com to taste it for yourself.

That's www Dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com.

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