Joy For Life Retreat - Part 2

Am I the world's slackest blogger? Life has been a whirlwind of finishing the college term, organising my holidays, still working etc etc etc that I've left you guys hanging with nothing but the lure of what tropical fruits I had during my trip to Tropical Fruit World...

It was Day 3 of retreat, we all jumped on the bus to head into town. I felt like I was on a school excursion! There was chatter and laughter as 60-odd of us sat and tried to split apples in half with our bare hands, as Sergei seemed to show us so effortlessly... I think maybe 3 of us managed to do it! Anyways, when we got into town and off-loaded from the bus, and like a kid in a lolly shop... I couldn't wait to sink my teeth into some of the things we were getting for our lunch...

 Ruby red dragonfruits...

Sweet and juicy custard apples...

Yellow dragonfruit! Yep I had never heard of it myself and I'm pretty sure it was everyone's favourite. Imagine passionfruit sorbet... YUM!

Then my favourite - and the one thing I knew was in season before heading north and the fruit I was telling Alex, Jain and Rosemary about all week. The mamey sapote. One of my all time favourite fruits. Put sweet potato/pumpkin pie together with the texture of avocadoes and you've got mamey sapotes. I absoultley LOVE this guy!

It was utter bliss :) The day was miserable, cold , wet and rainy but nothing could dampen my spirits as I sat there gorging on fresh tropical fruits. A few people didnt feel so good afterwards but being used to such a high fruit intake I felt AMAZING!

We were taken on a tour of the property after lunch and I had no idea how big this place was. I'm talking HUGE! We drove through checking out trees of fruits that I had never even heard of! Abiu, rollinias, babacos... amongst olive treees, manadrin trees, all different types of bananas, saoptes, apples, papayas, mangoes, massive jackfruits, coconuts... everything you could think of! There's even an entire undercover section devoted to Asian fruits alone!

We had a boat ride through the river watching ducks swim past, saw the Australian bush tucker fruit section, flew around on a mini train when we got to an island in the middle of the property... saw, patted and fed a horse, a donkey, chickens and a few other animals (yep, all still on the property), and then got back to the main entrance for one last hoorah - more fruit tastings!!
We all loaded back onto the bus, said goodbye to town, mobile phone reception, civilisation, and headed back to our little sanctuary to begin our Work again, and continue the detox (Grand Finale Part 3 still to come).