Ep #6 -- Exploring my new place in the Dominican

There's a termite nest on your... ...schlong. What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Viking in the Jungle. I'm Erik, the Viking. And this... ...is the jungle for today. Let me show you around. Today, what you'll find in this episode is that we are at the secret garden. Which is not that secret, because well... ...it's written right on it. The thing that does make it a little bit more secret... ...is that there are all kinds of plants that you first didn't see. And then all of a sudden you're surprised with how many fruits there actually exist here. We have golden apples. Pretty flowers. Lots of banana trees. All kinds of unknown pieces of fruit. I believe this is a wild berry. Coconuts. Even more pretty flowers. We have star fruits. Zapote. Mandarins. More bananas. More coconuts. Mangoes. Passion fruit. Con mucho pasión. Breadfruits. Jackfruits. And there is a whole lot more. And a whole lot to show. And you never really know what you end up with, because well... ...we are at the secret garden, people. And on a more serious note, the reason why I'm here is because a few weeks ago... ...the owners asked me if I wanted to take care of this place while they are on a trip to Europe. And so naturally I said, I have to think about it. But then I figured out that all the plants that they have here is a perfect opportunity... ...for me to be learning more about plants in different stages of life. Of course I am right now growing all the plants. If you've not seen that, check out the plant updates. Very proud of what's happening there. But of course it's going to take a lot of time for my cashew babies to grow super big. It's going to take a lot of time for my cacao trees to be growing very big. And here I can observe them. I can look at them in real time. I can enjoy the bananas that are growing there. I can enjoy the mangoes that are growing here. You can enjoy the avocados that are growing here. And simultaneously learn about permaculture. So this episode is all about how these plants behave. Some cool things that I found out about these plants. How cacao grows. Probably most of you don't know how cacao grows. So that's going to be epic. And some other cool things. So stick around. First thing I want to share with you is that I found out how palm trees grow. Post down in the comments. Pause this video. Post down in the comments if you knew how palm trees grow. Once you see it, it's pretty obvious. But I didn't know this. So check this out. This is how they grow. The palm trees are dropping the coconuts that are right on top of me. In a very dangerous situation. But they drop it and then they grow out of it. Which I think is incredible. And I tried to pick this up. But of course, it makes total sense. But out of the coconut, the roots are growing. So the coconut is actually the seed. Can you say that? I'm not entirely sure. But I think it's beautiful. And it's pretty added to my knowledge of how coconuts or how palm trees grow. That does beg the question. If the palm trees are growing from the coconuts that are falling right underneath the palm tree. Then wouldn't the new palm trees not have enough space to be growing? If you know the answer to that, then post it in the comments below. I am curious. Now I want to show you something cool. Do you see these trees right here? These are mango trees. And as you see, they grew together right here at the bottom. And the story behind this is that 20 years ago. Approximately 20 years ago. The owners of this piece of property were eating a delicious piece of mango. And they looked each other lovingly in the eyes. And they said, man, I would love to have more of these type of mangoes. And so what they did was they took the pit. And then they dug a hole right there. And both of the pits started growing into these magnificent huge mango trees. Now if that's not a beautiful love story, then I don't know what is. Look at this. They started growing together. And this is just the story that they're leaving behind on this piece of property. Brings us to the next piece of fruit. Which is the delicious banana. These bananas are absolutely delicious. And as you see, these ones are becoming quite ripe. And they take a pretty long time to turn from or to really grow. But a very short time to turn from green to yellow. So I was surprised how quickly this actually grew. And the ants love it as well. So every single time I want a banana, I have to fight with the ants. And I have that in general. Whenever I grab a banana tree, there's always ants that are biting on my hand. And these ants are ferocious people. It's crazy. Now fun fact about banana plants is that they only give you fruits once. And then they die. As you see this one for example. This one already fell over. And actually what you can see over there is there is still a bunch of bananas. I don't know if they're going to be ripened. It doesn't seem like it. But I've heard stories that it still happens. And what actually happens is that during their life, as you see right here. There's already a new tree growing. So I believe they constantly reproduce themselves while they're growing. And then the ones that give you the fruits, they die off. They die off, fall on the ground and become eventually the nutrition for the rest of the ground. So which is exactly what's happening on my land as well with the platano trees. Now I'm not entirely sure if they do the reproduction themselves. Or if we need to constantly plant new trees. But to me it makes more sense that they reproduce themselves. So we need to fact check that stuff. Now the star fruits are some of my favorite fruits. I don't know why but they look very friendly. And they are absolutely delicious. I don't know anything about them except for they need to be absolutely yellow. And then you can eat them. So I am waiting for this bunch to finally ripen. So that I can enjoy it. And it looks like in about a week. Maybe something like that. And also I had not thought about this type of fruit at all yet. So it's nice to be at this property so that I can get inspired by what I want to have on my land. And the star fruits are definitely part of it. And after all those fruits and all that sweetness. You've had enough and you need a little bit of passion. Then we got you covered here at the secret garden. One thing that I've absolutely enjoyed in the last couple of days. Is to go here in the backyard. And go walk around and look for golden eggs. All right look for the golden eggs people. There's one. And there's one. Let's see. Oh man there's so many. Look at that. Spot. Spot the yellow eggs. The golden eggs. There's one. I had two days where I didn't find any. So I was kind of waiting. But now there's so many passion fruits here laying on the ground. I'm gonna grab them and then I'm gonna show you how they grow. It's our lucky day folks. So what you'll see is that this one has been eaten. Yeah they're these yellow eggs. Well or golden eggs what we call them. And inside here is if you don't know what a passion fruit is. I call them alien fruits because this is what they look like. They have like gooey. I don't know gooey seeds in there. They're sweet sour. A little bit of both. Sometimes they're more sour. Sometimes they're more sweet. And it just looks like alien plasma inside of it. I don't know if I'm the only one thinking that. But yeah it's delicious though. And there's so many today. It's our lucky day. Well it's my lucky day. You don't get to taste it. You come visit someday. So here's how passion fruit grows. It grows on a vine which makes it awesome to be connecting. Combining with other pieces of fruit. So these vines can just make their way through the leaves of a tree. I've seen passion fruits going through all kinds of plants. It goes through the mango. The mango tree I've seen it connected to. Yeah just all kinds of trees. And what you see here. I don't know if you can see it. But there's a net here. And the vines of the passion fruits are growing through the net. So you get its entire net of passion fruit. And also what I on accident picked was a palm granite. So I didn't even know that this was here. So that's what I mean with it's the secret garden people. You never really know what you're gonna find. I don't know if this one is ready. I picked it by accident. I hit my head against it and then it fell. So sounds like something that a fruit would do when it's ready to eat. My question to you is. Are you ready to see what the biggest, the largest fruit of the world is? Let's go. The largest fruit in the world is jackfruit. Now we already have an experience with jackfruit. Because the other day I was going on John's farm. And this happened. All right. So we got a jackfruit tree fully loaded. And there's a ripe jackfruit tree right up there. And we got a Dutchman about to climb the tree. My choice of weapon. This is the first time he's climbing such a tropical tree. You got Diana in the back chilling under the jackfruits. Look at that. Just surrounded by jackfruit. All right. Which way is it gonna go? We got a little monkey hop. I'm gonna step back so you can see the technique in action. Oh man, it's like a bunch of dangling danglies over there. All right. We got halfway up. It's this one right? Yeah, it's the one. Got it going on y'all. Oh, I think someone's got it. Can you catch the fruit? Yeah. All right. Put that chocolate down. No. Okay. Yo, somebody's got to catch the fruit right now. You got it. All right. Slice it. All right. Show the camera what we got. Wow. Nice one. That jackfruit eventually did not turn out to be nice. And I feel like jackfruits are very delicate pieces of fruit. You have to pick them right when they're ready. And then you got to immediately do something with them. Otherwise, they go bad very quickly. And you can see that with these black ones, for example. And there are some black ones there on the ground as well. And a couple of days ago, there was actually one that was absolutely ripe. Or maybe it's already a week ago. It's absolutely ripe. And then I forgot to do anything with it. Now it's black. So I'm waiting for one of these to be ready. And once it's ready, I'll show you what to do with them. You can make incredible ice cream from them by just getting the fruit flesh. And put it in the fridge. And then you can just use it as ice cream. It's beautiful. It's awesome. It's delicious. This is just a small jackfruit. This can be twice or three times as big as my head. It's ridiculous. And it smells very sweet and delicious. That's a jackfruit. Ants. Some ants, they just bite you right in the good spot. And then you feel like your foot and your hand just tingling for five minutes after that you already took them off. Here, this was the beginning of a mango. But it's not ready yet. So what I want to say is there's also guanabana. Guanabana. They're not ready yet. So yeah, I can't show you it. But the other day, I also picked a guanabana on John's farm. And that looked a little bit like this. Okay, we got this. Just focus on the primary objective. There's a termite nest on your shlong. Just give thanks to the termites, bro. Give thanks and praises. You can step your foot right in their nest as leverage. Just as long as they don't bite your nuts, you're fine. There's some serious monkey action happening. There's a couple more rungs on the lata. Oh, what? That just plopped off. Is it kind of soft? Oh, but it came off so easily. Perfect catch. Now for the finale, what you see right behind me is a cacao tree. This is how cacao grows. And I never knew that. So it just came as one of the biggest surprises when I came to this island to experience how cacao grows. But for this type of work, we need a little bit more equipment. That's how we do. So I now got the cacao. And inside, well, I got the fruit. And inside of here is cacao. So let me show you what that looks like. Here it is. These are the cacao beans. And what I was surprised by when the first time that I ate this, is that, well, you can chew it. But really, the inside is very bitter. Just like how pure cacao, like pure cacao bars are bitter. But kind of the slime that's around it, the white stuff that's around it, the meat, as it were, that's very, very sweet. So these are actually candies. Candies of nature. And really, it's one thing that I've consistently been intrigued by. And that is that there's so many pieces of fruit. That the universe just gives you. I'm just intrigued why so many people are eating candy from the supermarket. I mean, I understand that, of course, when you're in the Netherlands, when you're in some Western country, then you don't have as much access to fruits like this. But still, you have access to mangoes. You have access to apples, even. I don't have access to apples. There are so many pieces of fruit that nature just provides to you. That are so incredibly sweet and so delicious. And are healthy for you. So all those people that are addicted to candy, step your game up. Get yourself some fruits. Now, to give an accurate view of what a productive garden could do for you, this is what I just picked in like five minutes. This is entirely full with golden eggs, aka passion fruits. Palm granite and bananas. And that's just for today, you know. And I'll be eating this for the rest of the week. And it's constantly producing. So yeah, like the avocados are about to come. The mangoes are about to come. And once they're starting, there's no way I can eat all of them. And it's really a feeling of abundance, you know. It feels really good to be in this position. I mean, I've read about it. I've seen it on videos that people are having their own fruits and their own food. And of course, this is not something that I've grown. But it's interesting to be feeling what it would be like to have a garden like this. All right, so that was it for today, people. Thank you for watching Viking in the Jungle. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you like this episode, you know what to do. Tickle that little subscribe button and that notification button. And also, if you have any questions or if you have any comments of things that you want to see, then let me know. Because I'm here documenting stuff for myself and for people that want to be checking this out. So if you want to see something, just let me know. If you want me to go to the beach, it's just two minutes away from here. If you want to visit me, then that's also fine. Just let me know and we'll figure something out. Also, big thing. This house, The Secret Garden, is for sale. So if you know someone that wants to have a bed and breakfast in the Dominican Republic, then this is exactly where they need to be. It already has a productive garden. It has five apartments and a villa. So I mean, it's a pretty cool place. So if you know someone that would want to buy this, get them in contact with me and I'll help them out. Unless they're too late, because it might sell out. So yeah, that was it for today, people. Enjoy your day and I'll see you in the next one.