In search of the world's finest chocolates, John Newton washes up on Venezuela's Caribbean shore

As our boat sped along the coast of Venezuela's Paria Peninsula, a land that no less a travel authority than Christopher Columbus had described as "the most beautiful in all the world," only one thing could distract me from the lush green peaks and palm-lined bays: the cooler sitting next to me. When it was opened by Billy Esser—the manager of the Hacienda Bukare, who was sitting on the other side of the boat that I had hired for the day with Dion and Katie, a young couple from London—I'd seen cans of Coke and beer sitting in the ice. The fisherman at the helm eagerly accepted a Polar pilsner, but Billy knew this wasn't what would interest me most. Instead, he pulled out a little plastic bag and poured several dark marble-sized balls into my hand: pure Venezuelan cacao.

Most processed cacao is separated into cacao butter and liquor, and those derivatives are eventually reunited, and other ingredients added, to form chocolate. But this was the real thing, mixed with a little sugar and a splash of vanilla. I bit into it: the richness of dark chocolate with none of the bitterness, and a subtle crunch from its slightly grainy texture, the result of the incompletely ground shells of roasted cacao beans.

Venezuela produces less than two percent of the world's cacao, but those beans are arguably the finest. Here, along the Paria Peninsula, south of the Caribbean—as well as on the shores of Lake Maracaibo and in the Andean foothills on the Colombian border—the criollo and trinitario varieties thrive. Less than ten percent of the world's cacao supply is criollo or trinitario; most is forastero, a hardier though much less flavorful strain. If the cocoa in most common candy bars comes from forastero beans, fine chocolate always includes at least some criollo or trinitario. It's these varieties that separate good chocolate from the rest of the pack.

We were headed to Santa Isabel, a remote town on the edge of Paria Peninsula National Park. From the small bay where we landed, we climbed a steep staircase built into a cliff dotted with tropical shrubs to reach a single unpaved street lined with humble homes. There, Billy passed us on to Gustavo, who would literally lead us up a creek—one lined with cacao trees—to the ruins of a cacao hacienda once owned by a certain Lopéz family. Billy had explained that we would have to wade across the creek once or twice, although it soon became clear that for most of our hike, we'd be ankle-deep in the clear water. Dion and Katie resigned themselves to having their impressively expensive hiking boots thoroughly drenched. I pondered whether the running shoes I'd have to buy to replace my threadbare (and now waterlogged) pair would qualify as a deductible business expense.

Along the banks of the creek, I had my first sight of cacao pods in situ. Hanging directly from the trunks and larger branches, the ridged pods were almond-shaped and the size of large eggplants. They came in shades from green to deep red, with the occasional ripe yellow pod lying on the ground, the sweet white pulp around the seeds harvested by monkeys and squirrels. Gustavo pointed out that these trees, their branches growing at odd angles, were no longer tended. "Arboles, no arbustos," Gustavo said. "Trees, not bushes." The truth, however, is that even farmed cacao grows as a tree, albeit a small one, that thrives in the shade.