I’ve been back for almost a week and am just catching up with things. I switch easily to Hawaii time (5 hours behind), but going back at all is hard.
I was actually able to try papaya with lilikoi while I was still on the ship. It was pretty good, if only because lilikoi is good. Papaya is a bit of a bland medium which fills out the mouth, letting the lilikoi to supply most of the flavor.
On the way back, there was a lot of lilikoi/passionfruit offered on the ship, so it looks like I didn’t need to buy those 3. I didn’t see that many people eating it, but me and my wife ate plenty, especially since it is so small. Or rather, the usable amount is small, given the overall size of the fruit.
After getting back, I saw passionfruit at Whole foods and was very pleasantly surprised by them being $2.99/lb, given that they felt quite light. Regrettably, I misread the sign and ended up spending way more than I planned on them, as they were $2.99 each…Approx 0.06 lbs each for a price of $49.83 per pound! Though I only got a few, so the price wasn’t horrible, except when looking at how small they are.
As far as overpriced fruit from the cruise, I think Dragonfruit takes the prize. It was $6 for a relatively small one and the flavor wasn’t anything special. Maybe even less flavorful than a papaya. I should really stick with yellow dragonfruit.
We caught the tail end of a small market in a rural area near Hilo, but of the two vendors left, they mostly sell non-fruit. The one fruit they had was lemons at 10 for $1 (wow). I told her about the last Meyers I had being too sour and she said that hers were pretty ripe and to give it a try. It was a bit sweeter than the Meyers, but still too sour to eat fresh, though I tried to give her $1 anyway. When she realized I didn’t really want any more lemons, she gave me some apple bananas (similar to the mini-bananas in stores) that another vendor had given her. I tried to say I didn’t want to take her bananas, but she said they had too much sugar for her. We ate them within 5 minutes of getting back to the car and they made a nice snack on the way back from the volcano (we hadn’t gotten to the main farmer’s market in downtown Hilo yet).
We didn’t buy any onshore, but the ship served Jackfruit. I didn’t dislike it, but I don’t see it as something I’ll search out. The texture was interesting-I think I saw somewhere it (the texture) is compared to meat, and I can kind of see that.
I waited a few days for the Soursop and Cherimoya to soften.
The cherimoya was sweet and pretty good, though I felt like there were a lot of tiny seeds or black spots to remove that I didn’t remember in the (distant) past when I had a cherimoya near home. But, this one had better flavor than I remember.
I have mixed feelings on the soursop. I like the flavor even better than cherimoya, as the soursop had a more balanced sweet-tart (though still plenty sweet). It was pretty annoying to eat though, with most of it consisting of fleshy sacks around seeds. I think I accidentally ate a few seeds, which I later found out is not good due to them being toxic. So, while I liked it, it was a bit of a process to eat it and I was getting pretty impatient with it by the end (it was a very large fruit…the bigger, spikier one in the above pic). I thought I had a pic of the insides, but can’t find it. It seems to me like it could be related to the cotton fruit, another sweet-tart fruit with flesh pockets around each seed.
There was a pickleball tournament each sea-day (days in transit between locations). Of the 10 tournaments, my wife and I won 7 each (6 together and 1 each when they randomized teams). Each time, there was a small prize (branded cards, a pin, a plastic tulip specific to the ship, etc). The last day they guy who was running it got us drinks and we chose raspberry and mango smoothies. Pretty good, but also not something I would spend money on during a cruise where so much is free/included.
One thing we saw on all the islands was chickens running around. Evidentially, they have escaped over the years (especially when hurricanes destroy coops). Most of the islands have mongoose (other than Kauai, I think), but it doesn’t seem like the mongoose are enough to keep the chickens in check. I was surprised that nobody goes around collecting and eating them, but was told that doesn’t happen for a few reasons. There are at least some level of protections for them, but I don’t think that would be enough without the 2nd reason…they just aren’t very tasty. They are a mix of 4 different chicken type, include fighting cocks, so they make for very tough meat.
One of our guides says that he hear of a recipe for making chicken stew:
put the chicken in a pot with a rock and boil until the rock is soft
I took some pictures of them running around and sent them to my youngest.
I asked: “why did the chicken cross the road?”
To get to a family re-union!
Her reply was:
Dad…no.
That’s not…
NOO
Noooooooo
That’s a funeral it’s going to
I thought my joke was funny (I always do 
), but I laughed more at her response.
Next up is to make a post about the GreenGardenGuy from my visit to Hilo. I’ll link to it from here once it is up.
