Chris' painful coconut experience

Ever since the first day in Costa Rica I knew that I had to harvest a coconut all by myself. It’s been my driving force while here! A lot of the trees are too tall to get at so it was tough to find a low tree that wasn’t already picked by someone else or the squirrels. But, I found a nice hidden tree in the back that had a few. Here’s how it went!

Part 1: Getting the coconut down from the tree was painful. I stood below the tree, looking up at the coconut as I swung a big stick trying to knock it down. Little did I know that I was standing in a giant ant hill and my foot became covered in ants. Virginie might tell you that I screamed like a little girl when they all started to bite me, but that’s not true 😛 My foot felt like it was on fire for quite a few hours after that though.

I ended up getting a chair and standing on that while I swung my mighty stick. Coconuts take a lot of hits before they fall.

Part 2: Getting through the woody stuff on the outside. I did this with a butter knife and a moderately more sharp knife. It wasn’t very efficient. I think i spent at least a half hour getting all this stuff off! It’s really tough. I’m buying a machete. Apparently they sell them here for like $4 and the guy who does our laundry will sharpen it for me.

Part 3: The little tiny thing that was inside the coconut! I definitely expected it to be bigger since the coconut was bigger than my head. Either way, I was pretty proud of myself to finally get all the woody stuff off 🙂

Part 4: Getting at the coconut water! This required a bit of innovation. As you can see I used a corkscrew to get in. Coconuts seem to have three little weak spots at the top that you can get into if you have something strong and small enough.

Part 5: Draining the juice. Once I had a hole made, I could easily drain the juice into a glass! I think they must have made this cup just the right size for coconuts.

Part 6: Getting at the meat. The shell of these bad boys is pretty hard, but it’s nothing compared to my big muscles. Virginie didn’t think I was strong enough to get into it but I proved her wrong! All you gotta do is smash it on a rock or something and it splits right around.