Las Frutas de Costa Rica

¡Hola amigos!

One really great thing about Costa Rica is the fruit. Because it never gets cold enough to snow in Costa Rica, farmers there can grow delicious fruit all year long. That means that we could easily find fresh tropical fruit from local fruit stands whenever we were hungry for something sweet. What fruits do you recognize on my breakfast plate below?

Hay sandía, piña, fresa, papaya, y mango.

(There are watermelon, pineapple, strawberry, papaya, and mango.) 

¿Qué es tu fruta favorita?

Mi fruta favorita es piña.

I also got to taste some fruits I have never seen before! Our favorite is this strange-looking fruit:

Hay un mamón chino.

This fruit doesn't really have an English name, though a friend from China told me that in Asia it is called a rambutan. The red, spiny skin is peeled off, and inside is the delicious white fruit:

Once you peel the skin off, you can eat the fruit and spit out the pit, which is about the size and shape of an almond. The fruit is very sweet and delicious. It tastes sort of like a big grape, but not at all sour.

We also tried this fruit at a chocolate farm near the Caribbean Sea:

I wish I could tell you what this fruit is called, but the person who gave it to me is a member of the Bribrí tribe of Native Americans who live in Costa Rica. She spoke English, Spanish, and Bribrí, but only knew the Bribrí word for this fruit. She climbed up a ladder and used a special stick to pull it down from a high branch for us:

Then she used a machete (a very large, sharp knife) to cut it into pieces for us to try:

This fruit is very soft and sweet. When you eat it, you only eat the white part, not the yellow rind. You also spit out the large, black seeds like you would with watermelon seeds. 

We also got to try chocolate fruit:

This fruit does not taste like chocolate at all. Once you cut open the shell, it comes in white sections, sort of the way an orange can be pulled apart into wedges. The white fruit is tangy and juicy. 

The reason this is called chocolate fruit is because it is the fruit of the cacao plant. Inside each section of fruit is a large seed. You could eat this seed, but it is very bitter. Instead of eating them, they are saved to make chocolate. This seed is a cocoa bean, and they are roasted and ground into the cocoa powder that we use to make brownies, cakes, and cookies. 

When we weren't eating fruit, we were drinking it! In Costa Rica we enjoyed many types of fruit juice. Our favorite was this one:

Can you tell what the ingredients are? Do you remember how to say them in Spanish?

We also drank a lot of delicious aguas naturales:

These wonderful drinks are like smoothies made of fruit, milk, and ice. The one I am drinking here is made of pineapple and starfruit, but they can be made with all types of tropical fruits (or combinations of fruits). These drinks are healthy and refreshing on a hot day!

What kind of fruit would you like to try in a tropical smoothie? You can tell me in the comments if you like.

¡Adiós!

Remember to press the blue "play" button a few times so you can practice pronouncing the Spanish words. Also, if you would like to learn more about how the cacao plant is used to make chocolate, you can ask your parents to help you read the story I wrote about it for grownups on a different blog. Part one is HERE and part two is HERE. In it you will also learn more about what life is like in the Bribrí tribe in Costa Rica.