Category Archives: Tropical

Miracle Fruit Taste Tripping

As part of the tropical fruit video series we’ve been doing, I decided miracle fruit should be next on the docket. We have three small trees and recently two of them started fruiting!

Miracle fruit
Miracle fruit berries growing on the tree

Miracle fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) is a little different from most of the other fruits of the tropics because the fruit itself is not really so much a food as a food enhancer or transformer. It makes nearly anything sour taste sweet after eating just one berry! The effect on the taste buds lasts a little less than an hour depending on the person.

When Britton and I first tried it, we were amazed and astounded that foods like lemons and limes tasted like lemon merengue and limeade. So we brought a couple of berries to a party and everyone who tried it was also wowed by the powers of this fruit. We did learn that not everything sour should be changed however! At the party wine changed to a flat Dr. Pepper taste and Medalla tasted watered down. The reactions people had to this amazing fruit gave me the idea to get a few friends together to try miracle fruit for themselves. This video is the result. Not only does the video demonstrate the magic of miracle fruit, but it also showcases some of the wonderful and adventurous people who live in/near Rincon. Enjoy.

 

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Wilderness and Faro La Ponderosa

Palms galore
Fields upon fields of huge coconut palms

This week our niece Summer came to visit us. It is always great when we have guests because it gives us a good reason to do some exploring that we otherwise put off due to our projects at the property. Our friends Dan and Theresa spontaneously changed their plans and we all went together to Aguadilla and Wilderness. The day was gorgeous and every picture we took looked like a postcard. We explored the Ponderosa Lighthouse ruins for a while and then we found a great little beach cove where we set up for some snorkeling, paddleboarding, swimming and sandwiches. It was an awesome day!

Road taken
The dirt road we took. Good thing Dan had a 4×4 truck!

Ponderosa Lighthouse ruins
The ruins of Faro La Ponderosa. What a cool place! The style reminded me of the Nunn Schoolhouse

Group
Group photo!

Group2
Ok, another!

Dan and Theresa up
Dan getting vertical with Theresa and Bandit down below (Bandit had a blast!)

Cassie wilderness
Ahoy! I have landed

Palms and garza bird
Garza and palms -there is a reason it is called “Wilderness”

 

Britton and Summer
We found this beautiful spot  with Flamboyans in bloom and the snorkeling was awesome!

Hidden Cove
Fantasy island with lots of hidden coves

Paddleboarding plus Dan
There was a strong current and wind that took Theresa and I a while to paddle against on the boards. It was gorgeous to look at the shoreline from just a ways off though

Cassie and Theresa Paddleboarding
Even Bandit got in on the paddleboarding action!

Solitary palm
Solitary palm tree blowing in the breeze

It was a great day trip and I would highly recommend it!

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Beginning the Deck

This last week we began the process of building a deck. This first entailed taking down the scaffolding from inside the house and using the materials to build more batter boards.

Inside of house without scaffolding
Inside the house without scaffolding

Batter boards for deck
Building the deck batterboards

Next was to mark and dig the footers and then to pour them.

Down below waldemar and jorgeHello down below! Getting ready to dig the footers for the posts

And then they worked to fill the footers and then the mini-columns that will hold the deck posts.

Deck footers
Footers/mini columns

Next up will be to put up the actual posts, headers and ledgers and then the supports.

In the meantime, the gardens are growing really good. Check out these pitangas we have been gathering!

Pitanga
Pitanga aka Surinam cherry

And these interesting ornamental ginger flowers on curving spiral stalks.

Ginger flower
Unique ginger flower

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A (Silly) Video Tour of the Finca

We often have people visit who are curious about what we’ve been up to, so we thought it would be fun to do a little silly video tour for those of you who can’t visit in real life. We had fun making it, and we hope you like it. We should probably do a video like this every year to see all the progress we make. We’ll see about that.

IMG_2911

 

 

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