FRUIT

I was feeling uninspired writing about our time in Cusco, so I decided to stop writing about that, and finally write about fruit! I wanted to wait until I had a nice variety to write about. This is not all of the new varieties in Peru, or even all that I've tried, but I think it's a good representative sample. Also, describing tastes is hard. Apologies in advance for that.
Here goes!

Peru has pretty much all of the standard fruits: apple, orange, banana, pineapple, pear, etc. Some more exotic ones (by my american standards): pomegranate, plantain. And the ones I'd never heard of before in my life, which are the ones I'll be highlighting here.

Chirimoya (custard apple)

Chirimoya is Jose's favorite fruit. This is the first truly exotic fruit I ate in Peru. My first day with my host family, within minutes of arriving, they gave me one of these. It has a consistency kind of like custard (thus the name in english), but obviously a little different too. It's sweet and a little acidic. Tastes kind of like a banana-mango-strawberry-coconut. Quite a strong flavor from this fruit!

Granadilla (variety of passion fruit)

Granadilla is a delicious fruit, if you can get past the weird sliminess of it. Eating it for the first time was definitely an interesting experience. It was one of the first new fruits I tried in Peru, and when I first opened it up, I was a little unsure about it. My host parents told me to just kind of suck on it, and not chew the seeds, which is what I did. I took my first tentative bite, and, while the sliminess was not my favorite, the sweet, mellow taste. It was quite pleasant, and I was surprised at how mild it was.

Maracuyá (passion fruit)

So, I love maracuyá flavored things. They're probably my favorite of all the flavors here. Juice, ice cream, popsicles, you name it. When I asked my host family about the actual fruit though, they said "people don't just eat the fruit here", or something like that. I was insistent though, so I bought one to try. Definitely agree with them now. It was probably the most sour thing I'd ever tasted. I tried adding sugar, but it didn't really help. Maracuyá flavored things, however, as I said, are delicious. They taste like sunshine and happiness. But really, it's sweet (with the added sugar, of course), and a little tangy.

Pepino (cucumber)

Obviously this is not a cucumber as we know it. But that is how the dictionary translated it for me, so deal with it. I also forgot to take a picture of the insides before I ate it. It was kind of like an apple, but juicier. And with very little flavor. Weird little fruit, this one.

Lúcuma (lucuma)

Lúcuma is by far the strangest fruit I have eaten here. I'm honestly not too much of a fan of this one, but for many peruvians it is their favorite. As you can maybe tell from the picture, it's kind of a dry fruit. Not a lot of juice, as in basically none.

To be honest, I don't really remember what this fruit is called. I asked Gloria (the woman who works in our house), and she couldn't remember either...

This fruit is very mild. It didn't have much of a flavor. The most distinctive thing I remember about this fruit was the surprising amount of seeds in the middle. It must not have been that exciting, because I've only eaten it once, and don't even remember the name. Disappoint section, I know, but I had the pictures, so I figured I might as well post them!

Aguaymanto (peruvian tomato)

This fruit kind of reminded me of a kiwi, but with a different texture. It's kind of sweet, but kind of sour too. It's got a nice combination of the two. You bite them off and eat them whole, and they're quite delicious! They feel kind of like eating cherries in the first bite, but less juicy. The texture on the inside is kind of mealy(?) but not really. That makes it sound really unpleasant. But it's not!

Pacay (pacay)

I think this was the strangest fruit we tried here. You eat that white part, that looks kind of like cotton, and throw the seeds away. It's sweet, and surprisingly has some juice in it. I was slightly sweet, and had a flavor I'm having a really hard time describing (shocking, I know). Okay, so maybe it had a bit of a vanilla flavor maybe?

Tuna (cactus fruit or prickly pear)

This is actually a cactus fruit I picked myself, from the cactus you can see in the background of the first picture. We were on a hike in San Jeronimo, and when the Peruvians with us pointed this out, I knew I wanted to try it. All those little black dots you see in the last picture are seeds, and you eat them along with the fruit. These are called prickly pears, but don't really taste like pear. They taste kind of like a rasberry mixed with a kiwi. But not really. But kind of. Descriptive, right?

All of the fruits in the above picture are talked about earlier in this article. I just thought it was pretty, and a good way to end the post!

Fruit here is amazing, and I will definitely miss it a lot. It's going to be hard to go back to the standard apple/orange/banana, but I'm glad I had the chance to try such a large variety. This post probably represents about half of the total new fruits I tried here, but don't ask me what the other ones were, because chances are I wouldn't remember what they were called. Suffice it to say they were all delicious (minus the lucuma), and I'm sad to leave them behind when I leave in a week.