Coconut Safari

Going on a tropical vacation is not all fun and games.  You get to swim in the warm blue water, surf the waves, and look for treasures.  Sooner or later, you are bound to get thirsty.  If you are lucky and you have normal parents, they'll just get you a can of your favorite soda.  On the other hand, if you have parents like mine who ban sodas of all kinds, they’ll force you to pick some coconuts directly from the tree and drink their milk.

Picking coconuts is not especially difficult but the trees on which they grow can be as tall as 30 feet or more up in the air. So unless you have a tall ladder or have figured out how to fly, you are in for a real challenge.

My dad, (who is always concerned that I might run out of challenges), decided to help me again on the conditions that I not only get the coconut down from the tree in one piece, but I also use only materials I found on the beach.  So using a ladder or buying rope was out of the question.  “Now go and hunt for coconuts!” he said.

When mom heard this, she sprung into action and said “For heavens sake, leave the poor girl alone! I’ll get the coconuts down.”



Maybe it was a full ten seconds before she realized that wouldn’t work.  So then, it was time for the professional to step in.  I spent the day searching for various objects on the beach and found the following ingredients:

- a long bamboo pole
- a flexible fiberglass rod
- several pieces of rope and cloth

I bent the fiberglass rod into a loop and attached it to the end of the bamboo pole using a long piece of rope (I unbraided it and tied the strands together to get a longer rope).  I used the smaller pieces of rope and cloth to reinforce the loop so it wouldn't break.

When the loop was done, I raised the pole, hooked the loop around a coconut and pulled…and down came 2 beautiful coconuts with a thump.

Once on the ground, my dad cut one of them open with a saw.  I was surprised to see that the actual coconut was inside a larger shell (I guess it needs the extra protection to survive a long voyage at sea). 

  
   
 

The juice of the coconut turned out to be sweet and the coconut itself was delicious.   I decided to keep the second coconut whole and bring it back home. Later, my mom helped me braid a harness for it and I hung my trophy from the ceiling in my room (right over the Pacific Ocean).   I am now an official coconut hunter.