It has been mango madness at our house for the last two weeks or so. It started somewhat slowly with only one or two mangos falling on our roof but the beat has slowly progressed and is still rising to a crescendo. Living in this little cabana when the mangos fall is like living inside of a drum with the roof of the house as the drum head. Boom, boom, bada bada the mangos keep falling from the sky.
Huge mango tree above the cabana
The mango tree is nice though because it keeps the cabana nice and cool. And who can complain, really, about free, delicious food falling down for you to eat!?
Some of the mangos are over-ripe or have bugs in them, so they go to the chickens. But many of them are beautiful and large mangos. We need to start finding more mango recipes because we just have SOOO many.
Not only do we have this large “common mango” but we think we have some other varieties that are just now blooming. We will see what kind they are soon. I actually really like the so-called common mango. Some people think they have too much fiber, but if you eat them at just their peak of ripeness they taste perfect to me!
In Rincón, May means mango in another way as well. It means man-go. The town has just cleared out of tourists. The roads are clear and easy to drive and the restaurants and shops are less crowded. It also means that many of the shops that cater to tourists are shutting down for the summer season. Some tourist-serving entities will wait out Man-go (people leaving) May and wait for the smaller wave of San Juaneros and other Puerto Rican tourists that come to the west on summer break.
I’ve never lived in a tourist-oriented town before, so this fluctuation of people has been an interesting aspect of living here. It makes getting to know people a little more difficult because you don’t know who will be around in a month or two. You quickly learn a person’s level of connection to the area. They may be cyclical like snow birds who stay all winter but leave around the end of March or April to return to where they really call “home” or they might be intermittent vacationers who have a place here but don’t stay for very long stretches at a time. Or they might simply be tourists or travelers or people with wanderlust who may be thinking about living here but are checking out other options.
There are year-rounders like us and most of the Puerto Rican population in town and there are people who hope to be year-rounders but aren’t sure they can make it through this lull in people if they are dependent on tourists for income. It has been a little hard to adjust to this varying flow of people because we have met some really cool people that we would really like to get to know better and spend more time with, but then they leave!
We are starting to see that everything here has a season in a different way than we experienced the seasons in Colorado. While there is no distinct change like snow or wind gusts and crispness to the air as there was in Colorado, there are seasons. Right now we are in the mango season and I think I kind of like it. Our town has become a quieter more intimate place. The permanent residents all have a sort of familiarity with each other. We all know and understand the excitement of the tourist season, but we can also sit back and take a deep breath during the time of the mango descent down mango alley and await the flamboyán trees fantastic show of colors. There is a calmness on the waters and in the town as the tourist frenzy cools and the air heats up. The rains have begun and things are turning green again. There is a change, though ever so slight. May means mango and that there is a new season underway.
Food from the yard this morning -mangos,starfruit, passionfruit, coconut/water and popcorn
Mango babies!
