From early morning to late afternoon temperatures currently vary between 25 and 35 degrees celsius; it’s so-called “good weather”, meaning no clouds are seen during daytime, and so I stay indoors most of the time. The best time to visit the beach, for my skin type at least, is after 5PM.

Yesterday afternoon we took a bus into the city and of course, with all that heat, coconut water is the preferred drink. Here’s where that comes from:

this bunch is almost ripe for drinking. Here’s a typical beach street scene:

notice the coconut payphone . Turning to the right, here’s a bunch of them lined up on the counter (we usually ask for a frozen coconut, though):

The proprietor demonstrates the proper technique for opening a coconut:

after which it looks like this:

notice that it’s full to the brim; in fact, the water is usually under pressure, so you have to be careful. At this stage it’s nearly transparent, and it’s drunk with a straw. After drinking one can ask to have it opened, and eat the flesh with a knife or spoon:

this one was halfway ripe. Unripe coconuts have only a thin, jelly-like layer inside, while ripe coconuts – the kind one usually sees in the US – have about double that thickness of flesh.

After my post on young coconuts some months ago I’ve always wanted to show you folks how this is done here in Brazil. Ah yes, and each coconut costs R$1,00 (about US$0.30) on the street; at a market it would cost about half of that.