Upon arrival, we entered the gift shop to pay our entrance fees and eat some fruit samples. You cannot pick any fruits within the park (they are pretty serious about this), but you can eat anything that has fallen on the ground. There are many fruits that have been prepared by the staff and ready to sample. Some of the fruits I tried were: Cecropia peltata, ice cream bean (Inga sp.), hog plum (Spondias purpurea), cherimoya, papaya, lychee (Litchi chinensis), Everglades tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) , white sapote (Cassimiroa edulis), and sapodilla (Manilkara zapota). There were MANY other plants fruiting, but only those that I mentioned were available for sampling.
We wandered around for a while until 11 am, when the first tram tour started. We noticed huge jackfruits (Artocarpus heterophyllus) as big as my head ripening on tree trunks. Jackfruit is the flavor of Juicy Fruit gum! We also saw many mamey sapote (Pouteria sapota) and Pachira aquatica fruiting. Carlos and I were the only people there to take the tour and it was pretty nice. A tram took us through the paved trails and our guide pointed out many cool fruiting plants, herbs, and spices.
After our private tour, Carlos and I wandered around, eating things off the ground. Some of the fruits we ate were: longans (Dimocarpus longan), lychees, Everglades tomatoes, peaches, mint, Stevia, and garlic chives. It was pretty fun sampling all the things while walking around. You are advised to only eat what you can identify (duh!) and since I am a half-time botanist (the other half of the time I am a zoologist!), I got to eat many things!
The Fruit and Spice Park was a fun day trip out of town and I should go there more often since the fruits available to sample change with the season!
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