São Tomé, the Island Where Chocolate Grows

If you drew a belt around the middle of the Earth, it would pass right through a pair of tiny green islands in the Atlantic Ocean. They are called São Tomé and Príncipe.

The islands are the tops of very old volcanoes, so they rise straight up out of the sea, steep and covered in rainforest. Clouds get caught on the peaks. It rains, and then the sun comes out, and everything drips and shines.

All sorts of creatures live there and nowhere else in the whole world — a tiny sunbird, a giant begonia, the smallest ibis on Earth. Scientists come a long way just to look at them.

But the thing São Tomé is most famous for grows on a small tree with big leaves.

Cocoa.

The pods hang straight off the trunk like fat yellow and orange lanterns. Inside each pod are beans wrapped in something white and sweet. The beans are taken out, left to rest, dried in the sun, and roasted — and that is how you begin to make chocolate.

For a while these two small islands grew more cocoa than anywhere else on Earth. People called São Tomé the Chocolate Islands.

So tonight, if you have ever tasted chocolate, some of it began on a steep green island sitting right on the middle of the world.

Goodnight, little islands.