For summer, cold fruit-and-yogurt soups include blueberry, strawberry, raspberry and peach.
Don Pedro, the house's owner, was ready with two blenders of cold fruit licuados.
If it's too cold, fruit won't ripen, but central heating generally creates too warm and dry an atmosphere, which can spoil fruit.
THE BAR Hot and cold sakes, including a selection of cold fruit sakes (of which plum sake is the best), beer and a small selection of wine.
The inventive cold fruit soups and roasted duck with orange sauce were delicious, for example, while the peppered tuna steak was leathery.
The food throughout the voyage ranges from perfectly fine (steak, lobster) to very good indeed (interesting cold fruit soups, conch fritters, jerk chicken).
The sweets case is crowded with cold fruit flans and baked open tarts, beautifully decorated cakes and bite-sized treats as well as bags of biscuits including delicate tuiles and langues de chat.
Although there's so much butter that it needs to be drained before serving (or presented in a bowl), the pastry is the crispest yet, which I attribute to the cold fruit beneath.
"If you try to put a cold fruit soup in a bowl with some ice cream or sorbet in the kitchen, it will melt by the time it comes to the table," Mr. Muller said.
When we finally made it to Kings Pool, we were given cold fruit drinks and shown through the handsome, low-key main lodge beside an oxbow lagoon of the Linyanti River, with panoramic views of grassy marshlands stretching off in the distance.
