There's just SOMETHING wonderful about the fruit Down Here in these Southern Caribbean Islands. Mangoes may very well now be off my list of favourite fruits to eat.

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Take the Starfruit (or Carambola, or Five Fingers) for example. Back home in the Cold Weather climates, these are imported and used mainly as decorator items in large punch bowls, floating around along with the ice cubes.

Here, you can buy them by the dozen, ripe orange flesh ready for a big bite, just like you would an apple. OMGoodness so sinfully good.



And then there's those Damn Mangoes. There are too many kinds of Mangoes to mention: Imperial, Julie, Ceylon and the list goes on and on.

Mostly they can be seen as oval shaped green pods dangling from the branches of very large trees, swinging in bunches as the wind passes through them and aerating the leaves, so the sun can ripen their very green flesh to hues of yellow and orange and red.

And when we hike or hash, we can oftentimes smell them before we see them, the almost sickly rotten fruit smell of mangoes gone bad, laying on the ground half washed away, the ants crawling over them in furious and frenzied lines, their sticky juices sometimes staining our mud-driven shoes.

When we arrived back in Grenada not almost a week ago now, I happily bought some mangoes off the guy who appeared at the dock. And then I bought some more in Foodland. And then at the Fresh Farmers Market we ventured to on Wednesday morning behind Spice Island Mall.

They are just SO amazingly delicious, the juices slurping all over your hands, and down your chin as you try and eat around the large pit in the middle. Sweet. Flavourful. Amazingly Stickily Yum.

With the beautiful sunny days we've been having mornings are the best time to get our chores done. Chores that are at the moment being qualified and quantified as "Re-Assembling our Boat After our Absence. But not before we have some mangoes slices in our yogourt.

The phone call from Turbulence arrived saying our Jib was ready. We had sent it in for cleaning and some pretty significant repairs.



Each Stitch and Addition needed to be checked and verified by the Capt'N, especially mulling over the material that had been added and with a Self-Speak Check he Sort-Of murmured his approval.



And along with that, came new Jib Sheets as well. Bonus !! And for a snack we ate some mangoes.

We hired Thaddeus to work some magic on our external teak, and work some magic he did. Sanding it down to the bare wood, and applying Three Part AwlGrip Varnish.



The End Result after a week is a job well done, and well, very shiny.



And to celebrate that evening, we enjoyed some mango daiquiris !!

Which was a very good idea at the time.

Until I woke up two days later with fiery itchy fingers, small blister like bumps all over the tops of my hands. The itchy bits. Burning Bits. Inflamed skin.

The itchy bumpy bits spreading faster than Bunnies in Love.

You may recall my experience with Lime Disease. Or Margarita Madness?

You can read all about it here

And at that time, the pharmacist and doctor had both first asked me if I had eaten mangoes. To which I had replied "no". And have obviously since then forgotten all about it. Until this Mango Rash made its ugly appearance.

Funny how that happens when we are healthy and fine and feeling good. We forget. We forget to appreciate the unique and wonderfully amazing well oiled beings we are. We forget to take care of ourselves.

Until, as in my case, I decided to eat some mangos.





The heat is exacerbating the itches and painful swelling of the skin makes it hard to bend my fingers. It wakes me up at night, so painfully itchy I want to itch, which I unconcsciouly do, until I remember not to, and by then the damage is done. The blisters broken, more blisters appearing and I'm cranking again. You have simply no idea how many times the tops of your hands/fingers get touchesd, scratched, bumped until that area is affected by itchy and painful bumps and blisters.

"No more mangoes for you" says the Capt'N as he cuddles me back to sleep !! And in a self-induced haze of pity, I agree.

"I'll stick to grapes..." I snicker. You know what that means, right?

(Wink Wink)