coconuts!

my first experience with a fresh coconut, straight off a palm tree, was on the beautiful flamanco beach on culebra island. I told laney and jameson that i had never experienced the whole process. also i had never tasted the difference between a young and an old coconut. and they were surely up for the challenge!

first, we roamed the beach looking for the perfect coconuts. we found a palm tree with young coconuts that were easy enough to reach. laney and i lifted jameson up, 'like a cheerleader', and he threw them down to us. then we found 2 old coconuts hiding from us in the brush. we quickly and excitedly brought them back to our campsite and fetched the machete!

the young coconuts were a lot easier to chop open then the old, thats for sure. jameson used his skills and got the young one open pretty fast. luckily our camping neighbor had a straw handy and we drank that water right up.

getting to the yummy meat of the old one was far more difficult but a rewarding challenge. and it was well worth the wait and effort! (let me just say that i remained an observer through all of this, and give jameson and laney all of the credit for breaking into them!)

the yellowish looking coconuts in this picture are the young coconuts. they have more water to drink but no meat to eat. the white coconut, on the bottom of the picture, is the old coconut which has probably half the amount of water but is full of meat. (i was surprised how filling it was)

starting on the left is the old coconut after its outer shell had been removed. this is how you might recognize one in the grocery store. the one in the middle is the old coconut fallen ripe from the tree, with the outer shell still on. the one on the right is the young coconut. once you chop the tip off you can use the point of your knife to pierce a hole right through the skin to drink till your hearts content. so so good.

and another thing to check off the list of things to do in life!