TROPICAL CORNUCOPIA

What I loved the most about living in a tropical country, besides the temperature off course, was the abundance of fresh fruits and veggies. Wherever I turned there was something waiting to be plucked.

It could have been in my garden, in the park or on the side of the street. You can imagine that my eyes popped out when I first saw this image. Given that back in Canada I used to pay $1 or more per mango, it was hard to understand why people would just let it rot in the ditch.

While living in Central America, I rarely bought any fruits from the market. That's because they were available everywhere. In some areas within the city, they were left out there for people to come and help themselves.

In my yard I had orange trees, papaya, tomate de arbol, chayote, otoe (an editable root named taro, far more nutritious and tastier and yucca) and lemons growing on their own.

The orange trees I had gave more than enough oranges to make a freshly squeezed juice each morning.

I was surprised to see how fast the papaya trees grew and bore fruits.

Here is a photo of the otoe, which is the root of the Elephant ear plant. You can see it is huge! I have seen the local indigenous people digging for it on the side of the road. Once I tasted it I knew why they kept on saying it was a delicacy. Later on I saw that in the market it was being sold for $2 per root.

Here is my son measuring himself with the Elephant ear plant to see how much he had grown after his nap.

My next door neighbours and friends had mangoes, avocado, pineapple, grapefruit, soursop, bananas, rambutan, pomelo, caju and a few local fruit trees that I don't recall the names.

Each morning my sweet neighbours used to leave me on the porch a basket with whatever had ripped overnight.

Check out the first photo of this post. Wouldn't you love to open the door and find something similar? I was blessed with amazing neighbours!

The only veggies I had to buy were tomatoes, cucumber, onion (imported because the local crop had been destroyed).

At one point we had so many oranges that my son was using them as cargo for his truck.

As for fruits, I had to pay only for watermelon and imported apples and grapes which were expensive compared to the cost of the ones locally produced.

The soil was incredibly fertile due to the volcanic ash and everything grew without any problem. I planted some spinach and shortly after I was able to offer some of it to the neighbours as well.

I also planted pineapple but I didn't get a chance to eat it because I had to leave before it was ready.

Unless stated otherwise, all photos used in this posts are taken and owned by myself. If you wish to use any of my images, please contact me!

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Please leave your feedback in the comments, I would love to hear your thoughts!

@2018 LaviPicu aka The Lyme Poet. All rights reserved.