Colombia –The Land Of Make Believe Fruits

“Nothing comes as an accomplishment instantly. Success does not come overnight. Patience is the key! Grow up and be the tree; but remember it takes dry and wet seasons to become a fruit bearer, achiever and impact maker!” Israelmore Ayivor

It seems like there are more fruits in Colombia than days of the year. I have never heard of most of these fruits.  All of them are delicious. Here are a just a few.

Guanabana (my new favorite fruit) It is a large green fruit covered with soft thorns.   The inside is a white fleshy substance with black/brown seeds. The flavor has been described as a combination of strawberry, sour pineapple and banana. The Guanabana tree is a  natural cancer cell killer 10,000 times stronger than chemo. (the white juice is guanabana)

Lulo (I love this juice) It looks like a small orange tomato. It has a citrus taste. It is usually served as a juice because the fruit has too strong a flavor to eat.

Tree Tomato (Tomate De Arbol) It looks like a tomato but tastes like tomato and kiwi or passionfruit. The skin is bitter so it is usually made into juice or served with cinnamon.

Uchuva It is a tangy creamy berry. It is sweet when ripe but can also be very sour. I brought back some uchuva jam.

Carambola – Star Fruit It tastes like a grape with citrus and apple.

Guama This is the strangest. fruit I have every eaten. It is a pod, like carob or tamarind filled with a sweet cotton like flesh. The seeds are a lot like slippery watermelon seeds but bigger. When you squeeze them between your fingers they shoot out. The Colombian saying “como pepa de guama” (like a guama seed), is used when someone or something leaves very quickly

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Maracuya -Colombia has a few different varieties of passionfruit. This is the most common variety. It You cut it in half and scoop out the sweet insides which are full of small seeds.

Granadilla is yellow with a stem.This is a round, orange passionfruit with crunchy blue seeds. It’s much sweeter and milder so it  is better to eat it alone and not as juice.

Nispero This fruit is oval or pear-shaped. The nispero is ripest and sweetest when orange, though some prefer it crisper and tart in the light brown stage. It’s got an apple – chocolate – strawberry flavor

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Pitayas (Dragon Fruit) You may know those bright pink dragon fruits so popular in Asia. These are a little different. They have the same spiky exterior except they are yellow instead of pink. Inside is also similar: white with tiny black seeds, but the taste is not as sweet

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Also there are sweet creamy avocados the size of your head and bananas in all sizes  and levels of  sweetness.

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If you aren’t eating something deep-fried in Colombia, you are having something delicious with strange fruit. Yet when all the fruit is strange, the strange becomes the familiar.

Gracias Alex Rodriguez for the impromptu fruit lesson.

Viaje Con Cuidado,

JAZ