On oranges and blueberries

The other day I came across one of those linguistic gems that gets a bit lost in translation: "buscar a su media naranja." Literally, it means "search for your half an orange," but the idea is similar to English's concept of finding your other half or your soulmate. I just thought the orange-half imagery was a fun and unique way to express an idea that's present worldwide.

In other fruit-related news, I have recently been struggling to explain the concept of blueberries to some cajabambinos. I am uncertain as to whether blueberries exist at all in Peru, but I've definitely never seen them in Cajabamba. Blueberries are probably my single favorite fruit; a summer treat of which I can easily consume an entire carton in a matter of hours (or maybe even just one hour). Unfortunately I'd temporarily forgotten the Spanish word for blueberry, so I was left to try and explain that my favorite fruits were these small, round, blue... things (also forgot the word for berry) that grow in summer and are delicious. Sadly, there were no smiles of recognition or shouts of eureka from my Peruvian listeners. The collective response was instead, "ah, you mean sauco! Or capulí!" These are two varieties of small berry-ish fruits native to Cajamarca's mountains, but they are decidedly not blueberries.

Sauco

Capulí - these aren't even blue!

Although they are pretty tasty berries in their own right, especially when made into ice cream, sauco and capulí are in my opinion a far cry from the pure deliciousness of blueberries. Maybe I'll have better luck on my fruit quest in Lima next week...