I grew up near the East coast and made my fair share of trips to the beach as a youngster. One of my favorite spots was a local and popular restaurant, the Sanitary Fish Market. What could possibly make a kid actually request to go to a seafood restaurant? Salt water taffy can. Oh, the joy of sticky, sweet goodness. Sure, we were able to watch taffy being made at the State Fair, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the taffy from Sanitary Fish Market. That was the best taffy my 14 year-old self had ever had.

I grew out of taffy as an adult… or so I had thought.

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I was recently given the opportunity to try a box of Ococoa’s Butter Cup Collection. I thought I knew chocolate. I thought I knew what flavors go well with chocolate (peanut butter, mint, and Sunkist, to name a few). I thought I knew what to expect from a box of chocolates. Then came Ococoa.

I get a lot of mail and have been receiving two to three packages per week for the last few months. When a box arrived last week, I assumed it was a homeschooling product I was expecting and didn’t bother to look at the return address. I got a knife, sliced the tape on the box, opened the flaps, and said, “I smell chocolate….”

That is a very pleasant, very enticing way to open a package.

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As if chocolate wasn’t a spiritual enough experience for me, I recently found out about Intentional Chocolate. Get this: the chocolate comes infused with good intentions. “Advanced meditators – some of whom trained with the Dalai Lama” add good intentions to each and every product.

In fact, it says so right on the bag: “Whomever consumes this chocolate will manifest optimal health and function at physical, emotional and mental levels, and in particular will enjoy an increased sense of energy, vigor, and well-being… for the benefit of mankind.”

OK, that’s all really groovy but how does it taste?

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Zoo Jellies in Vietnam. Minties in Australia. Marshmallows injected with green apple-flavored goo in Hong Kong. Kit Kats in Italy (some things you just can’t escape). Toblerone, Violet Crumble, Haribo Gummies, Ritter Sport Bars… I am a bit of a traveling fool and there are few thrills greater than walking into a supermercado – or tabbac, or roadside stand made of banana leaves – in a foreign land and alighting upon a rack of exotically enticing treats. So you can imagine my excitement, I’m sure, as well as my course of action, when I found myself in a Costa Rican airport earlier this summer, with a fistful of nonexchangeable colones just waiting to be spent.

It turns out that Costa Rica’s Café Britt, with its line of Chocolates Britt products, has pretty much cornered the San Jose International Airport candy market. And thanks to their very generous attitude towards free samples (much appreciated by the weary traveler), I was able to partake in a number of their delicious gourmet dark and white chocolate covered confections (namely coffee beans, passion fruit, macadamia nuts, pineapple, and cashews) before committing myself to a bag of dark chocolate covered guava jelly and one of dark chocolate covered cacao nibs.

Now, safely Stateside and a couple months removed from my latest adventure, I think it’s about time to relive all the Central American fun. Lucky for you, Candy Addict has a very lenient passport policy, so feel free to join me.

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