During extended travel, the exotic becoming the everyday. My daily walk past El Valle’s market almost always involves picking up some kind of fruit, and not the same-old bananas’n’apples you get at Loblaw’s.

Papayas, piñas (pineapples) and sandias (watermelons) are slung in my backpack after handing a few dollars to the vendor. At home, they are promptly chopped up. The juice and seeds spatter the counter, cutting board, and my fingers. I swat away the fruit flies eager for their share. These fruit are so fresh and tasty they do not hang around the fridge for long.

The gardener brings in bunches of ripening platano manzanos from behind the house. Think appearance and texture of bananas, but with apple flavour. A breakfast staple of mine here.

Mango trees are commonplace. The ripe yellow fruit drops to the ground with a dull “splat” to rot and get picked at by birds and insects. I pass by one such tree daily, and smell this not-unpleasant fermenting fruit aroma. Another new-to-me sensory experience!