Harvesting achotillos (aka rambutans)

       
I mentioned recently that it is achotillo season here in Ecuador, and what a season it is! The trees are literally dripping with these funny looking fruits. Achotillos, commonly known as rambutans, are tropical fruits native to Southeast Asia. The name rambutan is a derivation of the Malay word "rambut", which means hair. The fruit's most notable feature is a funny spikey outer casing that turns red when ripe; the yellow appendages look like crazy hair. Achotillo is a uniquely Ecuadorian name for the fruit because the hairy outside is identical to another seed pod, achiote, the food colorant I discussed in my last post.  

To eat achotillos, you either bite or tear open the thick hairy casing to find a smooth grape-sized fruit in the middle, which is rubbery and sweet. You then suck and chew off the inner pit and spit the seed out. As Paul says, this is a recurring theme in tropical fruit: sucking and chewing pulpy flesh off a large inner seed.

Today we went to a friend's finca to watch bananas being harvested and packaged for export and to pick achotillos. I thought I would share some pictures of our harvest. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the soaking wet children cooling off in the nearby stream. We were having too much fun to stop for photos.










                                                  



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