A Must Do For Tourists!

As soon as tourist hit the capital city of Port of Spain in Trinidad, one of the first things they do is visit the Queen's Park Savannah, one of the largest roundabouts in the world with lots of reserved green space in the midst of the urban landscape. A sidewalk surrounds the whole location and on the western side of the savannah are an abundance of coconut vendors with their colorful stalls and chilled coconuts ready to be cut! Today I document the experience as since the pandemic, they have started becoming a scarce site and I wanted to preserve them in lieu of the dynamic and harsh economic landscape of Port of Spain.

It was such a beautiful day and as you can see from the photo above, there were lots of trees and well manicured grass also known locally and lovingly as the "D Savannah Grass". These trees were planted all along the aforementioned western sidewalk and provided thick and lovely shade as I walked along trying to get the coconut vendors. It was so hard to believe on first glance like this that this place was so huge!

What must be said first, is that each stall would not have a name. You will see that their large ironwork carriage of sorts were supplied by the government in an effort to beautify the city and they were commercialised by placing company ads on them. So when you see each of the stalls, you are not seeing the name of the coconut vendor but that of the company paying for his stall's ad space! This first one was unfortunately closed though you could still see the remnants of coconut husks and even smaller unopened nuts on the inside. This one seemed to have a british colonial design for its ironwork.

This second one seemed to be more french colonial and was indeed open! There were fresh coconuts on display with their vibrant green and yellow colors. This one seemed much cleaner and well kept than the last as well. It sported a well known loan company on its ad spacing and I think I would return to this one when I was ready to purchase a coconut!

This one was entirely empty and devoid of any signs that they would have been selling at all recently. Some vendors open at night or evening times when people come out to take their run or evening walks. They also make a lot of money when there are fetes or parties right on the savannah and in Trinidad the partying never stops! So maybe this one only comes out when there are events.

There was not much more after that in terms of vendors. As I said, they were becoming quite scarce and as you can see, only one was open at the time I was visiting! I headed back to that coconut vendor that was open and I asked for one of his coldest, sweetest nuts with just water, no jelly. I love the jelly, don't get me wrong, but I did not have time to sit and scoop the wonderful sweet awesomeness that day.

He went to his freezer and pulled out a relatively small yellow nut. He explained that the larger nuts had more jelly and less water while this one had much more water with no jelly. He was quite knowledgeable about his trade and was extremely polite and well spoken despite his appearance. I was at first skeptical though as we usually get large nuts but thinking back, they used to finish fast and always had jelly so I decided to trust him.

With two or three swift but precise cuts with his extremely sharp cutlass, he cut down the outer husk to the watery chamber of the nut itself, so accurately after what seemed like years of experience, that he did not cut into the chamber just yet so as not to spill any of the water.

He then positioned the nut upright and puncture the top with the tip of his cutlass opening it with a spray that reminded me just like when one would open a nice cold refreshing can of coke! As he handed me the coconut, I saw that it was somewhat pink in color! I know this to be due to oxidation but a lot of people say that pink coconut water is supposed to be much better for you, who knows! What was awesome was that the coconut water was delicious and I indeed drank until my stomach was quite overfilled and still there so much more in the shell that I had to force to drink it out!

This was quite an awesome experience and, even though I do live in Trinidad, I have not really done this often. I would actually pass straight as we have coconuts at home that my dad likes to keep in the home and cut open when we want water and jelly! I would not hesitate to get some cold coconut water out in public again though and I was quite glad to be able to document this dying tourist activity! Thank a lot for coming along, Cheers!