Helpful Links About Exotic Fruits

Learn about rambutans, longan, and other rare fruits using the helpful resources below. These links about exotic fruits in Puerto Rico and beyond aim to help readers find out more about various rare produce. You can also click here to watch a video of our farm.

I wanted to add some additional notes to this page referring to the articles written about this farm by major print media. In 2006, I was contacted by David Karp, a writer for the NY Times within one week of launching www.mangosteen.com. Karp’s interest in mangosteens led to an article later that year about the time, effort, expense and mystique of this exotic fruit. David visited the farm, was bitten by our local ants within minutes and the rest was put on paper for all to see (August 9, 2006- “Forbidden? Not the mangosteen”)  I mention this because almost 20 years later, another writer, Thomas Fuller of the NY Times (and still friends with David who has since moved on to the LA Times) asked Karp if he knew anyone doing anything with durian. David’s immediate response led to Fuller contacting me and then joining a group who had already planned a tour of the farm last August, 2025. I spent three days being interviewed along with many other people and this was the subject of another article about the farm: see August 31, 2025. “In the Hills of Puerto Rico, Feasting on a Very Smelly Fruit.” 

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I’ve met a lot of durian fanatics and I place Fuller near the pinnacle. His years living in Southeast Asia fine-tuned his love for this exotic fruit and we talked about this shared obsession for many hours. In the process of obsessing over this and other topics, it turned out that  Fuller had previously written a book on a very different topic and one I read a few weeks later. It is a wonderful heartwarming and informative book about deafness in the US and elsewhere over the past few centuries. Absolutely nothing to do with fruit, just a wonderful account of a team of deaf high schoolers finding a common way to communicate on many levels and excel in a sport that requires toughness, focus, teamwork and… the rest is history. It is also a deep dive into the history of deaf culture and the very different ways in which many countries around the world chose to integrate this into their societies. Like Fuller and durian, this books deserves its time in the light of day.

The Boys of Riverside, by Thomas Fuller. 2024