Tropical

A Guava Chronicle

Guavas are tropical, little and round. In the Dominican Republic they are larger and didn’t look very tasteful. In my region of Mexico the most coveted are pink- they are the sweetest. I assume there are pink guavas in Hawai, as I saw a movie in which a pink-guava mimosa was served, it looked delicious. Very high in vitamin C, you can find them in candy, with cheese as a desert, as juice, or even as my favorite flavor electrolyte. 

The town I live in proudly declares itself World Capital of the Guava. I have not found the official number, but every night trucks drive their loads to the highway where the boxes, or guacales are loaded on to semis to make their way to the central market in Mexico City. It’s a perilous affair. Risks include dirty traffic police and distributors’ arbitrary prices. I try not to bite the seeds because they’ll get stuck in my teeth for hours. Guavas don’t stay fresh for very long, so every day hundreds of tons get thrown out from la Central de Abastos. Juice manufacturers offer measly prices for third rate product – barely worth the gasoline to drive them the fruit. 

We make jams, and while they’re successful amongst our guests we have a whole storage closet full of them. Some friends for a while made a craft-beer out of guava, but out here in rural Mexico there was not enough of a market to sustain their business. There are larger guacales to collect soursop, mangos, mamey, zapote and ciruela when they’re in season but 90% of the farmers have guava trees. They say the first ones came from Peru. One of the evidences used to theorize that the Purépechas from Central Michoacan are actually descendants of the Quechuas from South America. A south-north migration. Others say these theories are nonsense. And yet others have told me the elders say so themselves. 

I work in tourism and take city-dwellers out into guava fields and talk about the life-cycle of the tree and colloquial beliefs about the harvesting even though I’m new to the scene. Hijo de la guayaba (son of a guava) is a national saying, and it refers to the harvesters being exposed to a certain pheromone when picking the fruit that incites baby-making mood when back home. I’ve fallen in love with the scenery – perhaps due to the hormones – perhaps due to the lively green scenery of this fertile land. Water springs and mild weather allow for growing just about anything. 

The Passion Fruit Trail

Character: The passion fruit trail

Problematic: Iguana poachers

The path from the hot springs to the waterfall was part new, part ancient. We were sitting by the waterfall the other day when out of the jungle three hunters materialized. By the look of their ragged clothes, ancient rifles and smudged faces, they were very poor. They were looking for iguanas. Just for fun? Or to feed their families? I have been appointed guardian for this space, and yet, this may be a millennial need I be confronting. How to ask them not to hunt on the property when it’s what they’ve been doing for generations? Only talking to them. I only got in a quick question as to were they were heading, before getting a grunted, ‘beyond this place’ to reassure ‘el güero’ they were leaving, but a longer conversation is needed.

A week later I was walking a group of elderly ladies down this same path. They were fascinated with every nook and flower. A solitary hibiscus found on the trail got tossed into a girl’s hair. Knowing we wouldn’t be able to hike for very far or long, we trudged slowly around the big garden, getting a close look at everything we crossed. I’d never realized before that what we call Red Flame, are really bracts- or specialized leaves- and the actual flowers spurting from the red are white. Littered along this trail are passion fruit, fallen from the overhanging vines, Granada flowers giving way to the fruit, and spectacular Golden Orb Spider cobwebs.  This part of the trail is on private land. Once you cross the road, the path becomes a public walkway used by all the community to visit the waterfall. 

Although less flowers were to be found on this section of the trail, butterflies were abundant. Giant White Morphs floating softly thru the air, Silkworms suspended in the air amassing their string as they crawled back up from the overhead branches, fluttering Sulphurs, Whites and Yellows, Swallowtails flashing their pink and yellow dots, Zebra Longwings dazzling their stripes. Perhaps a lack of iguanas?

I’ve never seen a lizard on this trail. We’ve seen MotMots, ringed-tailed cats, and fire-fly larvae on the stream banks. The passion fruit trail is lush and perhaps in danger. Every rain season rocks come a tumbling. Foam aggregations give a sense of human discharge and soap remains. Plastic  and waste have to be fished out weekly. Perhaps, our trail is not in danger, and I am but a rookie conservation-enthusiast. Truth be told, I don’t have the slightest idea of tell-tale signs of erosion, water quality, and animal populations. But base markers have to be set.