Getting cURL certificates to work with C++ and vcp

Question

so I have a class that makes an http call using curl in visual studios 2017 that was installed via vcpkg discussed: here, using curl_easy function calls:

string returnResponseAsString(string requestURL) {
    CURL *curl_handle;
    CURLcode res;

    struct MemoryStruct chunk;

    chunk.memory = (char *)malloc(1);
    chunk.size = 0;

    curl_global_init(CURL_GLOBAL_ALL);

    /* init the curl session */
    curl_handle = curl_easy_init();

    /*Turn off SSL Verifcation*/
    curl_easy_setopt(curl_handle, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);

    /* specify URL to get */
    curl_easy_setopt(curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, requestURL.c_str());

    /* send all data to this function  */
    curl_easy_setopt(curl_handle, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, WriteMemoryCallback);

   /* we pass our 'chunk' struct to the callback function */
   curl_easy_setopt(curl_handle, CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, (void *)&chunk);

  /* some servers don't like requests that are made without a user-agent*/        
  curl_easy_setopt(curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "libcurl-agent/1.0");

   /* get it! */
   res = curl_easy_perform(curl_handle);

   /* check for errors */
   if (res != CURLE_OK) {
       fprintf(stderr, "curl_easy_perform() failed: %s\n",
           curl_easy_strerror(res));
    }
    else {

        printf("%lu bytes retrieved\n", (long)chunk.size);
    }

    string response = chunk.memory;

    /* cleanup curl stuff */
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl_handle);

    free(chunk.memory);

    /* we're done with libcurl, so clean it up */
    curl_global_cleanup();

    return response;
}

If I dont include this line curl_easy_setopt(curl_handle, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE); that turns off SSL verification, I get the error: curl_easy_perform() failed: Peer certificate cannot be authenticated with given CA certificates. I tried to install the certificates as per these instructions: link, but is says to place the downloaded certs in the same folder as the curl.exe. As far as I can tell there is no curl.exe installed by the vcpkg. I looked for .crt and I have an image of the found certs under vcpkg. Where Should I place the .crt file for authentication to work with visual studios?