La Cruz – the capital of palta

Today is a time to introduce to everyone place that has become my home for the upcoming 4 months. The place is called La Cruz. It is very small town or I could say bigger countryside (12 000 habitants) located in province Quillota, region Valparaiso. It is situated only 50 km from ocean side. The great thing is that La Cruz is located on the main road between Valparaiso/Vina and Santiago so you can very easily access each of this cities form here.

So basically is quite good location little bit out of big cities but still easily connected with them. Thus, I can enjoy beautiful cities like Vina or Valparaiso every weekend.

So is anything special about La Cruz. In fact, yes. Since the area is very fertile and perfect to grow different kind of fruits and vegetable. The one type of fruit likes this area a lot. It is avocado, or as Chilean say “Palta”. Thus, officially La Cruz is the national capital of avocado.

Avocado trees are everywhere. Each house has many avocado trees, just like Polish houses have apple trees. As I has recently found out there many types of paltas in the world and in Chile as well. However the most popular one in here is Hass. It is quite small fruit with dark, almost black skin with small pebble. It has high fat flesh (oil content can be even 20 percent), a nutty taste and almond butter texture just like cream cheese. Thus it eaten here with bread just like in Europe we put butter or cream cheese in our bread. It is one of most favourite avocado types in the world.

La Cruz is also popular for other fruit. It is one unknown in the Central and Eastern Europe and is called Chirimoya also called custard apple thanks to it sherbet texture.

La Cruza is split in two areas – urban and rural. I live in urban one, so basically there are houses and paltas selling points. The urban part is more like a city with school, big supermarket, couple of shops, pharmacy and gas station. There is a gym, gas station and even a restaurant. Well, that how it looks like a little, surrounded by mountains and palta trees town of la Cruz.

La Cruz main square

La Cruz cultural centre