Today we did a forest tour. Me and the two Swiss girls, Angela and Justina. We went to meet the guide - they don't bother much about seat belts around here - and the driver was telling us about the earthquake here in Lombok in 2018.
It was really bad and more than 500 people died. He and many others lost their houses - Hari included.
He also told us how he liked to teach English to the kids in the village school.
I think they see how useful English is , as you can earn money guiding etc.
The guides that can speak say, French or Italian can earn more!
We started our walk in the forest with our guide, Rasak. We first saw a mango tree but the fruit is different to the mangoes we get at home. Here they have many more variety's. This one was smaller and not ripe until later and more sour than the traditional one we see in the shops at home.
There are also around 15 types of banana. Some taste very different and some are supposed to be green. The tree only produces fruit once. Then they cut it and another grows. They take around 3 to 6 months to grow, quite fast, but it depends on the type. The cut tree they feed to the cows or other animals.
There was fruit that is poisonous. The test to see if its safe, he said, is to see if the monkey eats it first. They have two types of monkey in this forest, black and grey but they were quite shy as we only saw one on our walk. There are also snakes and wild boar, although quite rare - I’m glad as they can be vicious and charge at people, and all you can do is run or climb up a tree!
There was Jack fruit and Radak picked us some cashew nuts - I didn’t realise cashew also had a fruit which is edible. It was quite sweet but left your mouth very dry. He collected many cashews to eat later.
We found ginger root in the ground and chillies growing and also magic mushrooms.
The notches in this palm tree are made so that people can climb the tree and get the coconuts. Justina had a go.
This tree is mahogany. It is a very hard wood and slow growing - this tree is around 70 years old.
There was also a form of cotton growing in the trees which they collect and spin into clothing etc.
There were star fruit. And a plant with a leaf which is completely waterproof.
This stone looked like a tortoise head!
They collect the sap from this palm tree to make a natural brown sugar or caramel. The sap, or 'sweet water' as they call it is incredibly sweet and can be boiled, for six hours, to make the sugar. For one cup of brown sugar you need around a litre of sap so they have to climb the tree many times to fix on the bamboo tube & bottle to collect it.
It can be fermented to make a kind of beer, which is something the Hindu people do on Bali - not here since they are Muslim and don’t drink…..although some do!
This is cacao - as we know this is used to make chocolate or cokelat in Indonesian.
And these are unripe coffee beans. And dragon fruit - apply named as the plant loos like a dragon draped over the rock with the fruit - when ripe is an orange colour and looks like flames.
And here is a vanilla plant. The vanilla has to be taken from this plant amnd processed by hand which is why it is expensive when exported
We went to a place where we met Anna who we would help prepare the ingredients for the curry. She chopped up the Papaya - a bit like a potato and we made coconut milk by grating coconut and mixing it with water. You had to squeeze it in the water and sieve it to make the milk.
There were some ingredients already collected to use in the curry - small onions, garlic, paprika (the bigger red chilli) small hot chilli, and a small lemon which smelt like strong lime.
We collected a leaf to go in the curry and found galangal, ginger turmeric and aromatic ginger root.
This was all ground into a paste, and cooked in a pot. This was the sambal - a mix of tomato and chilli and very hot!!
When the curry was cooked we had it with tofu, tempeh, noodles and rice
It was so delicious and fresh.
Then Anna roasted coffee beans and these were ground to make coffee powder which we drank later. We ate some dragon fruit. It was so sweet and the colour was amazing!
And also a fruit called a water apple.
He roasted the cashews and we ate them. You had to break off the black husk to find the nut inside - they tasted more like chestnuts - apparently this is the fresh taste and the ones we eat are dried and so taste different.
We saw the end process of the sap boiling, which was boiled until it turned to a sticky caramel, some of which we ate with coconut and the rest was formed into blocks shaped from bamboo cups, which harden to make a brown sugar that can be used in cooking etc.
The cups can be re-used.
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