Choco Coconut Seafood

The Pacific coast of Choco cooks with coconut, and the dish to know is encocado: fish or prawns in a thick sauce of coconut milk, onion, tomato and local herbs, served with coconut rice and patacones. Around it sit fish sancocho, crabs, and piangua, the black mangrove clams women collect by hand at low tide, along with chontaduro, the palm fruit boiled and eaten with salt and honey. Herbs such as poleo and chillangua give the food a flavour you will not meet in the rest of the country. Almost everything else, including most vegetables and all wheat, arrives by plane, which shows in both the price and the menu.

The main sights

• Encocado - fish or prawns in reduced coconut milk with local herbs.
• Piangua - black mangrove clams collected by hand at low tide.
• Chontaduro - the boiled palm fruit eaten with salt and honey.
• Coconut rice - arroz con coco cooked dark with caramelised coconut.

When to go

July to October is the whale season, when most visitors come and when lodges are open and staffed; outside it some close and boat connections thin out. Rain falls in serious quantity in every month here, so the season is chosen for the whales and the flights rather than for the weather. Book lodges and the small flights well ahead in season.

Practical notes

This is one of the wettest places on earth and it rains hard and daily. Food is expensive because it is flown in, and lodges sell full board because there is almost no alternative. The menu repeats fish, rice and plantain and choice is limited. Flights are small, weight-limited and cancelled for weather, so leave spare days at each end of the trip.

Nearby

The whale-watching bays, mangrove inlets and thermal springs around Nuqui and Bahia Solano.