Although we live in the altiplano, where it’s very dry and hasn’t rained since November, we are very fortunate to live about 2 hours from the jungle–which is a great source of fresh fruit and veggies.

Beginning in late November, the mandarin oranges start coming up the mountain from Rio Verde to be sold in San Luis.  A couple of days before my scuba course, I was told by a friend that I would love Rio Verde because the city would smell like very sweet oranges– and she was right!  It was such a wonderful smell!  The only thing better than the smell of the oranges was the tasty oranges for sale on the side of the road.  There were plenty of orange vendors to choose from and it reminded me of the mango vendors near Salina Cruz. 

We stopped by an orange stand to pick up a few oranges to bring back home with us.  Unfortunately, the catch was that they were lots of orangessold in 25lb bags!  We figured that was a lot of oranges for 2 people, but we knew we could make fresh orange juice and we were pretty certain we would get through the bag.  I wasn`t quite sure how much a bag of oranges that size would cost, but I guessed that it would be at least $50 pesos (about $5 Canadian).  To my surprise, the entire bag was $20 pesos!   Now as you can see, these are not the prettiest oranges in the world and they are most certainly NOT export quality.  As a matter of fact, you might not even find these bad boys on the reduced counter at your local grocery store.  However, what they lack in looks, they most definitely make up  in flavour.  They are the sweetest, tastiest oranges I have ever had in my life!  Sadly, I believe that orange season is coming to an end, but I can`t wait for next year and we`ll definitely be making a couple of trips back out there to get our fix.