The Sibu Chocolate facility in the hills above Heredia offers one of the better food-industry tours in the Central Valley. The operation is a serious artisan chocolate maker, not a tourist attraction that happens to make chocolate, and the tour reflects that: visitors see the full process from raw cacao pods through fermentation, drying, roasting, and grinding to the finished bar, with tasting at each stage.
The chocolate itself — using high-quality local cacao with recipes that draw on pre-Columbian processing methods — is among the best produced in Costa Rica. The gift shop sells the full range at reasonable prices. Tours need to be booked in advance; check the website for current schedules. The drive up from Heredia passes through coffee country and is scenic in its own right.