Tamarind

by FERENC IVANICS
Tamarind is a really fancy and popular fruit. Kind of. Since Mexico it's been on the shelves of grocery stores as a soft drink. The tree is resistant and grows well in full sun. The fruit or pod is a legume, some five inches long and it has a hard, brown shell. The fruit has a fleshy, juicy pulp.


Its flavor is, how to put it, unique. It has a quite strong aroma, tastes acidic and mildly sweet. It's so acid that it's impossible to eat more than a handful at a time without damaging your mouth. But anyways, it's fine and produces a great soft drink.

Food of the Gods

by FERENC IVANICS
We saw cocoa plantations in southern Mexico and Belize as well. But in Guatemala this strange-looking little tree is common as a garden plant. It's not the leaves that look surprising, rather its fruits. These American football shaped fruits appear on older branches and on the trunk.



Well, we have to confess that so far we haven't found really tasty chocolates on the American continent. Which is sad, since we both would love it. And when you walk 20+ miles a day, you must afford a luxury like fine chocolates. In Europe we consumed "enormous" quantities of cheap, but tasty tablets of chocolate. And here, we see these beautiful plants all around us, but there's no good chocs anywhere. It's a shame.

Banana Trucks

by FERENC IVANICS
There's only one major port in Guatemala, and it's Puerto Barrios. And there's only one major road leading to this port from the inner regions of the country. Guatemala is a world leader, at least in banana production. The world's most important banana companies are all here: Chiquita, DelMonte and Dole. We're talking about millions of tons of fruits here.


It all meant that we had to walk some 100 miles in extremely heavy traffic. We've seen long truck convoys. Sure, they were speeding, passing each other wherever they could (and I mean, in unbelievable places). I suppose a faster ride means more money for the driver.


First we were a bit scared seeing all those "almost-crashes", but later we got used to the action. Still, walking along the side of the road we had to keep all our eyes open.

Breadfruit: A James Cook Fail

by FERENC IVANICS
Well, here's another fruit. Lately we've mentioned a lot of fruits and vegetables on our blog. My apologies to those who find that boring, but we think that it's interesting to see what there's to eat around the world. And it's definitely interesting with the eyes of a gardener. There's a lot more to try, but the ones we present here are the most important plants. Such cool tropical plant is the Artocarpus or Breadfruit. It was the famous Captain James Cook, who tried to spread it on the American continent (to provide high-energy food for slaves).


Its fruits are huge green balls, rich in starch. In Belize they fry it and they fry it; and it tastes good. Its flavor reminded us to roasted nuts. It's quite tasty and nourishing.

Sapote

by FERENC IVANICS
We saw sapote fruits first time in Mexico. The sapote tree is nice, robust and tall, but it looks obvious that it doesn't like cold. It's really a tropical plant. We found some fruits along the way but they were unripe and hard. The fruits that fall from the trees are quickly swiped by animals.


In Belize we carried two unripe sapote fruits for three days in our backpacks. When it finally softened, we tried it. Under the skin (that looks like a hardened human skin) there's an orange-red flesh and a huge black stone. It's juicy and pulpy, faintly sweet with a scent of cinnamon. Not bad and it yields high.


There's at least a dozen different types of sapotes, the one you see on the picture is, hmm, well, one of them...

Scent of Mangoes

by FERENC IVANICS
Mango trees are blooming. Their small, brownish-yellow flowers hang from the trees in clusters. It's not a colorful but an interesting sight. Its scent however is heavenly. Sometimes we walk miles covered by this powerful scent. I was having headaches of this scent for three days... I knew it was almost identical to some familiar smell, the scent of a tree natural in our homeland. I wondered. Elderflower? Black locust? But I wasn't sure.


Then on the third day I smelled a bushy cluster of flowers again and I remembered... I remembered those winter afternoons when, as a child, I came home from the snowball-fights and I grasped with my bluish fingers a cup of hot linden flower tea. Mango flowers smell like linden flowers.

As Healthy as it Gets

Mango Trees
October 6th, 8:00 AM
North: 19.605505
West: 96.399397

by FERENC IVANICS
We found a camp spot thanks to the owner of a small diner. We slept below some mango trees, we liked the birds singing during dusk and dawn. Another interesting experience was checking out the noni plantation right next to our spot.


I don’t know much about noni, I know that it’s healthy to consume it, just like in the case of aloe vera, but don’t really know what’s it good for. We tasted it raw and I should say that it’s not that good. Bananas are way better. It’s a pretty strange sight that the forming fruit is still blooming.

Coconut Zone

Coconut Grove
September 29th 1:45 PM
North: 20.381953
West: 96.934175

by FERENC IVANICS
Up until now we haven’t seen coconut palms but in gardens, mostly cultivated for its beauty, not for its nutritional merits. As we reached the sea nea Barra de Nautla, we reached the northern limit of the Coconut Cultivation Zone. There are acres of coconut palms here.


At the side of the roads there are coconut stands everywhere. They are sold as refreshment or candy. As for coconut products, the range is lesser...


Everyone has the same product: a flavored sweet made of coconut and sugar. The best we have tried was green coconut, you can drink its refreshing juice then eat its jelly-like flesh. But of course, not without some chili and lemons.

Bananas, Part 1

by FERENC IVANICS
Bananas, they are well known around the globe so I don’t have to introduce them as I did with other strange fruits. But while—at least in Hungary—you won’t find but only one type of bananas in grocery stores, here it’s a different story. As we approach the real Central America, we stumble upon more and more banana-specialties. Bananas are cheap, they sell two kilos for a buck, so we can afford to try every single kind of it.


We always name them. That one is a “teat” variety, three peaces of this giant banana weight almost two pounds. Its flesh is yellowish-orange and it tastes sour-fruity but sweet at the same time.


On the next picture you can see the Mexican Puff Daddy. These bananas are shorter and fatter. This is one of the most exquisite bananas. When ripen, its skin often splits by itself.


And finally, that is the red banana. We haven’t tried it yet.

Okeechobee Visit

by FERENC IVANICS
We walked all the way along the eastern shore of the Okeechobee lake. Haven’t seen much of the lake itself, though, since there’s a levee around the lake. There’s a walkway on the top of the levee but it’s not recommended to sleep on the dike due to the alligator threat.


After Belle Glade the swampland began to disappear and trees started to show themselves. Somewhere at this border we stumbled upon a fruit garden. But instead of seeing the common—of course, to us common—apples, pears, apricots, peaches or cherries, we saw mango, papaya, tamarind, avocado, coconut, carambola, custard apple. But mostly mango.



We followed our walk with a papaya, two pieces of mango and a dozen tamarinds in our hands. Along the road there’s wild forest here, they look surprisingly abandoned and tangled with vegetation. Well, this still is Florida. We visioned thousands of unknown species in the wild around us. We heard some strange noises, probably the sound of wild birds and insects. A few minutes ago the librarian lady scared us with rattlesnake stories. We haven’t seen wild rattlesnakes but yes, wild papaya. Of course it’s a plant, it does no harm, and even though it’s a lot smaller than its cultivated cousin, it’s really tasty.


Rainstorms are still common, we try to keep ourselves dry dressing up in garbage bags and putting one on our backpacks as well. Today a lightning hit pretty close to us and it scared us shitless... We have a new fierce enemy: fire ants. They are extremely aggressive, I think they eat anything that’s not metallic. We have to look around where to put our bottoms when having a break. That’s all for now, we’re on to Orlando.

Strange Fruits, Part 1: Custard-apple, Argan and Cactus Fig
Strange Fruits, Part 2: Palmyra Palm Seeds, Bissap, Persimmon

The Mystery of the Strawberry Fields

Interpretation of the lyrics of Strawberry Fields Forever, a tune from The Beatles has been a mystery for quite long, and many tried to add their two cents.

We think that the strawberry adventure of the WorldWalkers is a mildly entertaining addition to the discussion, even though it has a minor scope.

by FERENC IVANICS

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn’t matter much to me.

Unfortunately we didn’t pay attention to the words of John Lennon, we roamed the streets of Seville with our eyes open and especially with our ears open, looking for some job opportunity. Near the coach station a young man approached us, he looked quite abandoned and though it was early in the morning he was most definitely drunk. He started a long monologue and we put aside our prejudice and paid attention; anyone might be of assistance to you, you might be of assistance to anyone, who take part in the process, doesn’t really matter.

Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

He wanted to tell us two things: would have liked a sip from our red wine, and mentioned a possible job. We did not want to take him down—we had only some coke in our bottle—so we didn’t offer him our “wine”, but we asked him about that job. It was strawberry season in Huelva, they always needed hands for harvesting the fruit. Though he looked like he was in another reality, we thought a walk was exactly what we needed, so we set off to the strawberry fields.

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low.
That is you can’t you know tune in but it’s all right.
That is I think it’s not too bad.

Next day we traveled to Huelva, it was a 60 miles coach ride. When we arrived we were told that the strawberry fields are located a bit further, some 10 miles away, in Palos de la Frontera. We walked that distance on an interesting sidewalk, on a wooden structure near the river. Though it was a pleasant hike, we were alone all the way. The structure was sometimes high, sometimes low, and was surrounded by an industrial landscape. No one would like to tune in to that pollution.



But all right, it was not too bad, and it was a surprise to stumble upon an interesting statue. First it looked like a Christian monument, but later we discovered some details that reminded us to Egyptian and Central American figures. What could make a peace-activist happier than something that manifests the peaceful coexistence of various cultures? Some strawberries, maybe.

Always no sometimes think it’s me, but you know I know when it’s a dream.
I think, er No, I mean, er Yes but it’s all wrong.
That is I think I disagree.

Finally, we found some fields near Palos: yes, we would get a job, we thought. Then came the disappointment, the farmers said no, the local small-scale producers sorted it out within the family; they did not need more hands. Our dreams about having diarrhea of eating too many strawberries slowly disappeared.

Strange Fruits, Part 2: Palmyra Palm Seeds, Bissap, Persimmon

Here you go. The second delivery of the boys’ thoughts about fruits they tried along their walk. Some of them tastier, some of them with less flavor.

by FERENC IVANICS

Palmyra Palm Fruit (Seed)

When we still had some 60 miles to go to arrive to Dakar (Senegal) huge fan palms started to appear more and more frequently. Nice specimens of the African palmyra palms, a great sight on the dusk horizon, bringing pleasant and less pleasant thoughts into our minds: like Vietnam.


The fruits of these palms are like enormous berries, and they hang on the trees in large clusters. The palm tree and its fruits look definitely different than coconut palms but the fruit is edible. So we tried it.


They sell them along the road, on the spot. On the face of it, it looks like there’s loads of them, but it’s relative. If you imagine the fruits shrunk to the size of a currant then they would hardly fill a basket.


Anyways, we bought some and tried some. The fruit is usually eaten roasted, but the seeds are edible, too, when they are young and fresh. So we cut the fruit open and found three somethings inside. The texture of these somethings is somewhat like silicone. I would compare the touch of it to lychees, but only the touch, not the taste.



Not by a long shot. These jelly-like seeds contain a small amount of sweet fluid, which is quite tasty. The seed itself doesn’t really taste anything, but it’s not bad either. It won’t be our favorite fruit but we will remember trying it, for a while. So, it’s a half-this, half-that.

Bissap or Roselle

The next surprise awaited us in Senegal, too. Bissap, a national soft drink of the country.


You would think it’s a fruit juice, a mixture of raspberry-blackberry-blueberry-cranberry flavors, but it’s a tea. Or I should say an infusion. The plant is a cousin of hibiscus, it looks like a thin bush and it has many bright red, fleshy fruits that looked like flowers to us.



Eating them raw is not recommended, they are like lemon on steroids, extremely sour. They dry these red fruits, make an infusion, add some sugar and voilà, your bissap “juice” is ready. It had been completely unknown to us before, and yet, we found out that it can be grown in European continental climate as well. It’s really delicious; anyone can give it a try. So, note to self: do try this at home. :)

Persimmon

Our last guest today is persimmon, which has some variants around the world. This one we ran into in France is probably the Japanese persimmon or kaki, widely cultivated in Southern Europe. It’s best when it softens a bit after harvest. Did not become our favorite, either. Its texture is quite unique.

Strange Fruits, Part 1: Custard-apple, Argan and Cactus Fig

Ferenc and István have always tried to eat local and seasonal food along their walk. Usually they eat what the locals eat. If it’s octopus than octopus, if camel meat than camel meat. Of course that’s the cheapest way to live as well, eat what nature gives at a given time.

The seasonality affects mostly fruits and vegetables, and man, they have tasted many strange things during the last year. And things tend to get stranger as they get farther from home. We start a series of posts about the weird fruits they tried.

by FERENC IVANICS

Custard-apple or Chirimoya

Custard-apple is a fruit of a semi-evergreen tree that prefers a warm and humid climate. But we first saw the fruit without the tree in a grocery store. We tried it, and immediately threw it away; it was crap, a ball with huge stones and without any flavor at all.


But later we discovered (when we were spending the night camping in a chirimoya plantation), that it’s bad only while it’s firm and hard. Probably the piece we had bought was unripe. When it gets soft, even the transformation of the ugliest caterpillar to the most beautiful butterfly is incomparable to its metamorphosis. The bitter vegetable that tastes like flour turns into a luscious fruit full of heavenly tropical aromas. When it falls off the tree it’s not fully ripe yet, you have to wait a day or two patiently ’til it grows perfect. Thank you almighty or evolution (delete whichever does not apply :) for giving us this wonder.

Argan

We saw the argan trees first on our maps. They were dense green patches near Agadir, Morocco. We thought that we would have a nice walk in some cool, shadowy groves; well, not exactly. Those argan patches look 100% authentic “African style” when you see them. You feel the desert is close just by looking at them. This is the odd-fruit-out of the post, since the flesh of the actual fruit is extremely bitter and sticky. When I tried it I couldn’t help spitting it out and hoping that it wasn’t poisonous. :)


But its stone contains an oil highly valued (and priced) by the cosmetics industry. It’s also edible and is quite delicious (we tried it by courtesy of a bartender). Its uses are more or less like olive oil’s. The roasted and ground seed by-product is used in households as a flour substitute.


Other things grow on argan trees as well: goats! :) We were told by locals that someone had hybridized the argan tree and goats. The seeds take ten years to germinate and the trees begin fruiting in another seven years. Then you can harvest tons of bleating goats every year. The story was more than suspicious but then one day we saw a hybrid argan tree full of “fruits”.

Cactus Fig or Tuna

This strange phenomenon is the fruit of the Opuntia cacti, which are widely spread in the world; they are the most cold tolerant cacti around. Its season was in July in Morocco, they sold a pound for a buck or so. On the outside it’s yellowish-green and is fully covered with thin, hair-like spines that easily penetrate skin, detach from the plant and cause irritation. So you can peel it with care or leave the task to the fruit seller, they do it happily for a small tip.


On the inside it’s full of small seeds surrounded by refreshing, juicy flesh. Somewhat reminded us to melons. They are also used to make candies and refreshing drinks.


Ferenc peeling a cactus fig on YouTube (Hungarian commentary)