There’s pandanus and there’s pandanus

One of the ironies of living in Hawaii after living in highlands Papua New Guinea is that all the tropical flora and fauna doesn’t look ‘exotic’ the way it does to mainlanders who first arrive here. It looks slightly… _off_. Many varieties of pandanus grow here in Honolulu, for instance, but none of them resemble the stuff that I saw in Porgera (where Pandanus is totally central to the culture of the area). I keep having conversations about this with people here who have never seen ‘my’ version of pandanus. So this blog entry is a mental note and bookmark to this great picture of “Marita”:http://www.pngbd.com/photos/watermark.php?file=505/3412Madang_Market_Marita_Red_Pandanus_Madang.jpg, which is both delicious and very hard to find pictures of, even on the Internet. Yes folks: it really _doesn’t_ look anything like coastal pandanus fruits or… well… anything else, really.