Everybody loves Mango!

It's getting to be that time in Merida.

The heat of the pre-rainy season months of June and July is building; the sun shines brightly every day; and mangoes ripen and fall from trees all over Merida.

Merida hosts multitudes of two-to-three-story mango trees ... all of them literally dripping with ripe fruit these days. In some cases a tree is confined to a colonial courtyard or yard, which affords the owners hundreds of tree-ripened mangoes every year, some large, some small, but all perfectly ripe by the time they fall and hit the ground with a heavy, juicy thud.

One of our neighbors has a tree that shades her driveway. She lines up the ripe mangoes that fall on her retaining wall adjacent to her driveway, so she doesn't run them over with her car. She has 30 ripe mangoes on her wall at any given time, flaunting her mango fortune to the rest of us, just out of reach behind an iron gate.

We've dubbed Calle 57, which we often take on our walks to the main Plaza,"mango alley," as it is home to two huge mango trees that overhang the sidewalk and street. We are always on the lookout for freshly dropped mangoes ... you can claim them as your own if if you are lucky enough to get to them first. But competition is stiff.

The streets below the mango trees are lined with half eaten mangoes, mango pits, and mangoes that have been squashed by traffic: tropical road kill.

The street dogs love finding a fresh mango -- they'll rip right into them and are surprisingly able to strip them pretty clean. (Which sometimes I have a hard time doing with a sharp kitchen knife and two thumbs!) Also, people -- it seems nobody can resist a fresh mango. Just the other day, about a half a block away, we saw the perfect mango that had dropped from its tree. But suddenly, out of nowhere, a little old Mayan woman in traditional dress darted around the corner and scooped it up before we got to it. She examined it for about a second, and then took a large satisfying (and quite juicy!) bite from it, skin and everything.

There is nothing better than a completely tree ripened mango. They are delicious!