The Versatile Coconut Tree

The five largest coconut producing countries are Indonesia, Philippines, India, Sri Lanka and Brazil. However, the natives of the San Blas Islands also rely on Coconut not only as a source of food, but also income, selling most of their harvest to Colombia.

It is not only the meat of the coconut they are after, although that is the most well known. The fruit, or nut is harvested for coconut water, oil, milk and shredded coconut as we know it. Coconut water which is naturally sterile until the coconut is opened, provides a nice, refreshing drink and is also quite good for you. The water contains sugar, fiber, proteins, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals and is said to be an isotonic electrolyte becoming popular as a sports drink. The coconut meat which we enjoyed eating directly from the fresh coconuts we bought, is usually dried and shredded and used in sweets such as Bounty chocolate bars and my favorite, macaroons. Coconut milk is also used in cooking, often as a complement to a curry dish. And of course, coconut oil is popular for frying or as an ingredient in cosmetics and soaps. Although coconut oil is high in saturated fats, the Organic Facts website makes a lot of claims as to the health benefits including weight loss. I let you do your own research on this topic ... I wish losing a few pounds were really as simple as eating more coconut. (http://www.organicfacts.net/organic-oils/organic-coconut-oil/health-benefits-of-coconut-oil.html).

The husk fiber of a coconut is used to make ropes, mats and brushes as well as caulking, stuffing and potting compost. We saw the fronds used for roof thatch for huts and shades here in the islands. They also burn the dried leaves and extract lime from the ashes. The timber or trunk of the tree is used for houses and boats.

And I discovered that the activated carbon in water filters is often from coconuts because although more expensive, it is more effective.

And now, a few more interesting but completely useless facts:

• Coconut is grown in more than 80 countries.
• The top ten coconut growing countries produce 56.4 million tonnes per year.
• India produces 15,729 million nuts per year using 1.8 million hectares of land.
• It takes about 90,000 nuts to make 1 tonne if activated carbon.

How many shoes in the pile?

The number of flip flops and other shoes we collected was 346 which makes 173 mismatched pairs.

They say the average number of shoes owned by women in the US is 27 pairs. All my girlfriends out there who own 30 or 40 pairs of shoes, which, I know you do because we are not 'average', do you ever think about what happens to them when you grow tired of them? What a lot of waste we create just to stay "in fashion". I am also guilty of owning too many pairs of shoes. I have taken a lot of ribbing from Jens when we travel somewhere and about a third of my luggage space is taken up by shoes. Yup, we need running shoes for the gym, walking shoes for outings, flip flops for poolside, dress shoes for office (at least two pairs to match our clothes) and of course a pair of heels or two for the dinner dates.

My running shoes did double duty as hiking shoes on our trek. They cane back a little muddy, but cleaned up just fine.

Onboard SEGWUN, I counted 10 pairs of shoes. Jens has 4 and I have 6. Not too bad even though we spend a great deal of our time barefoot.

Anyone missing a shoe?

Thanks to those who participated in our little contest. No one guessed the correct answer so we try again with another question (see below). I'm not sure what it says about our friends when condoms was one of the most frequent of guesses. Other guesses were: styrofoam, plastic bags, tires, cigarette packaging, rubber duckie, and carton packages. We saw some styrofoam of course, mostly take out food trays. There were also a few plastic toys, but I don't recall any rubber ducks. Oh, and yes, we did see some Tetra Pak packages, but thankfully only a handful or so.

The correct answer is footwear with the large majority of it being flip flops. If you ever wondered where your old flip flops ended up, you might just find them in this pile.

Jens and I spent two hours going around the island collecting all the flip flops and footwear that had washed up on shore. By our calculations, we believe footwear comes in a distant second to plastic containers and their lids. I couldn't begin to imagine how long it would have taken us if we had also collected the plastic containers for water, juice, food products, oil, toiletries such as deodorant, and the tons of plastic caps that had made it to the island. Probably third on the list in terms of quantity were glass bottles, mostly liquor bottles, all of them empty unfortunately.

Can you guess how many there are in this pile? The Segwun t-shirt goes to the person with the closest guess without going over.

San Blas Pictorial

The San Blas are littered with over 300 islands, most of them uninhibited.

The Kuna ladies selling Molas from their ulu to our friends on Snowaway.

This island is clearly inhabited. We stopped in for a visit. I can say, they certainly live a simple life.

The Kunas are excellent seaman and travel several miles in their small dugout canoe with the help if a sail.

Our purchase of fresh coconuts. Delicious!

The perfect 'deserted island'. Two palm trees and a lot of sand. We brought along a hammock for Jens to fulfill his dream.

We bought a couple of freshly caught lobster for dinner. Cooked on the BBQ with butter, garlic and a little lime juice. Yummy!

Our trip in the dinghy up the Diablo River. We had a huge rainstorm the night before and the river turned a nice shade of brown. We didn't do the hike as intended, as it was a little too muddy.

The snorkeling around the islands was fantastic. I have never seen so many starfish. One time I counted 15 just in the area around me. We also saw a lot of conchs, and small baby conchs. Very nice!

Baby starfish

Baby conch

Fan coral with small fish swimming n front. There were millions of these small fish in the sea.

Kuna fishermen heading out for the morning.

Our struggle with footprints (see end of article for contest*)

As we cruise to the less popular tourist destinations and also the less developed areas, we become increasingly aware of the garbage we create. This is due to the fact that we have fewer places where we can dispose of our garbage, which means storing it on board for a week or so at a time. Also, we have to provision the boat for a longer period knowing we won't have access to a good supermarket for some time. Whatever is brought on the boat in the form of packaging will have to get off the boat somehow. We try to favor products with a minimum of packaging such as cereal in bags without the outer box, large bottles of dish and hand soap to refill our small containers, juice in plastic pouches instead of jugs or cartons, etc. We also don't buy ready meals, preferring to cook and bake ourselves. But we don't have an answer to everything. The products in PET and aluminum cans which make up a large amount of our packaging waste for which we have not found a better alternative other than eliminating from our consumption altogether is beer and diet soda. Hmmmm.

Some cruisers dispose of cans, glass and plastic overboard. They seem to think it's ok after all, the sea is wide and deep, right? They advise to remove the tops and bottoms from cans, break the glass so it will sink and fill the plastic bottles with something so they too will sink. I can't bring myself to throw anything overboard other than green waste. Even that we do only when we are not near an island because who wants orange peels washing up on their shore and even then I am uneasy about it as it takes forever to degrade food waste in salt water (see table below)

This bottle floating by our boat was not going to sink any time soon, even though it was full.

By law in the US it is illegal to dump anything overboard within 3 miles from shore. Within 3-12 miles you can dump food, cloth, glass, metal and crockery as long as it is in pieces smaller than 1 inch. Any type of plastic is illegal to dump at any time. However, with the length of time it takes for things to degrade in sea water, I think it's wise to keep our garbage out of the water and look for places that recycle. So far on this journey which has taken us to 12 countries, we have not found a single marina outside of the USA that provides bins for recyclables.

Garbage in Salt Water Degradability Rates (taken from Dozier's Waterway Guide)

• 2-4 weeks: paper towel
• 8 weeks: apple core
• 50 years: tin can
• 200 years: aluminum can
• 450 years: plastic bottle
• 600 years: glass bottle

This looks like an idyllic island of coconut trees. Take a closer look...

....and see all the plastic that has washed up on shore.

Along the coast of Colombia and through the waters of Kuna Yala (San Blas), we are seeing more and more waste floating in the sea and washed up on shore. The majority of this waste is plastic. Plastic bags and plastic containers of all sorts and sizes. Some is aluminum cans and glass bottles. The rest is logs, branches and coconuts.

It is really a shame to see a beautiful island shoreline littered with plastic. I don't know what the answer is, but I think the responsibility of the manufacturer has to come into play. How can these large multinationals be so eager to export their products to these islands and make their profits without thinking about what the locals should do with the packaging once the product is consumed. Should they not also be responsible for the waste they are creating? They should be embarrassed to see what they contribute to the landscape of our planet. This is not only an issue of littering. The islands don't have the resources for recycling and their solution to too much garbage is to burn it along with other debris. Low heat and high smoke fires make for a lot of toxins in the air.

Having seen all the plastic debris, I was curious as to how much packaging we actually had on board SEGWUN which prompted me to do a quick audit to see what do we contribute in the form of carbon footprint. Plastic is definitely number one on the list. Everything from food to cleaning products to cosmetics and medicines is wrapped or bottled in plastic these days. In Colombia we noticed a huge shift in the grocery industry from PET bottles to plastic pouches for milk, juice and water. There were also a large number of products in stand up pouches with screw tops for things such as sour cream, mayonnaise, sauces, jams, tomato products, and many other condiments. While this form of packaging is still plastic based and doesn't get rid of the waste entirely it certainly reduces it. The next step is making sure there is a proper collection and disposal system in place.

We have to be aware of the consequences of our decisions and purchases and be ready to think a little differently about what impact we have on the world around us if we are serious about making a difference. I honestly can say I have a far different view of the role of the packaging industry now that I no longer have a vested interest in it.

"THE SECOND MOST FREQUENTLY OBSERVED MAN-MADE ITEM SEEN WASHED UP ON SHORE ON A SAN BLAS ISLAND WAS : ___________________"

So now for a little contest*. I mentioned that we were dismayed with the amount of plastic containers of all shapes and sizes we saw washed up on shore on the islands in San Blas. There is a prize of a Segwun t-shirt to the first person that correctly completes the above statement. Send your guess to sy.segwun@gmail.com.

*not an official contest. This is just for a bit of fun.

10 lazy days in Kuna Yala

A late morning breakfast of pancakes and coffee with the Saila of the island. Brilliant hot sun. Jumping in the sea to cool down. An afternoon snorkel on the reef. Marveling at the millions of small pin sized fish sparkling in the water. Getting a perfect picture of Segwun with the coconut palms and white sand beach island in the background. An evening rain storm with a lightning show in the distance. A candlelight dinner of chili and rice with toasted garlic bread and a bottle of wine. This all makes for a typical day in the San Blas islands, or Kuna Yala as they are now officially referred to.

Life in the islands is completely stress free. Where there is nothing to do but read a good book and gaze sleepily at the picture postcard islands around you. Or have the little girl that lives on the island teach you a simple game in the sand which she was able to explain without words and only actions. Although we tried hard to follow it was clear that whatever happened, she was going to win. Did the rules change, or did we just not really understand the finer points of the game? All in good fun and it was a moment to laugh and be silly as we hopped around the board scratched in the sand with a piece of coral and were reminded what it was to be a child again.

Visitors in dugout canoes show up at the side of the boat without notice having quietly paddled from a nearby island. Each day we have been visited by the neighboring Kunas; most selling Molas. Others collecting a fee for anchoring off the island or selling freshly caught lobsters, crabs and octopus or beer and groceries. The most important visit of all was by Soledad island's Saila (chief) who came round to invite us to the nightly Congresso and also ask for a contribution to the event. I was just making breakfast when he arrived, so he invited himself on board and joined us for pancakes and coffee. We made a donation and with a bottle of cold water from our fridge he quietly paddled off in his ulu (dug out canoe). The Kunas are the native people in the islands of Kuna Yala. Kuna are similar to the Kogi's of Colombia in that they have their own language, live very much the way they did before the 'white' man showed up, are small in stature, and are soft spoken, gentle and respectful.

What is a Mola you ask? Molas are hand stitched, intricately designed pieces of cloth that are then sewn into the traditional Kuna women's dresses. There are the 'tourist' Molas which have a more simple design, colorful backgrounds and typically pictures of birds and fish. And then you meet a Mola Master who makes the traditional Molas with traditional colors and designs which are usually more geometric and are highly intricate using several layers of fabric. These will cost you more as they can take four weeks to make.

We met two Mola Masters; Vanencio, from whom we bought a beautiful Mola worthy of framing and Lisa who is also a well-known transvestite. She spoke very good english and had some beautiful Molas, but unfortunately we had already spent enough money on Molas.

We learned a little about the islands from Giddo who was tending the coconut plantation on Green Island. He comes there every week to collect the coconuts that have fallen and to trim off the dead branches. He shares the responsibility with another family member, working one month on, one month off. The island is quite large and is shared by two families. The harvested coconuts are taken to Sugar Island to be sold to the Colombians. He offered to bring coconuts to our boat and showed up with his ulu almost overflowing with coconuts. I was amazed he didn't tip over his canoe as he was standing to talk to us. He had prepared two big green coconuts for us that were full of sweet water and we also took two small ones with coconut more suitable for grating. Then he set his sail and headed out again as we feasted on fresh coconut.

We enjoyed the island hopping and snorkeling but then fuel was running low and the pantry was also looking a little uninspiring so we made ready one last time as we headed to the marina in Colon.

On our way to San Blas

The rainy season has arrived in Santa Marta and treated us to some rain and fabulous rainbows and sunsets. Colombia was not on our agenda when we started our journey in January. It has been a pleasant surprise and a great experience.

We leave Santa Marta this morning, hugging the Colombian coast line for a time and then straight across to San Blas islands. We figure on about 48 hours of sailing, but this morning there is little wind so we will probably motor sail until the winds pick up this afternoon.


Good-bye Colombia ...until next time!

PS: I don't think we will have regular Internet connections for the next couple of weeks. It may be a while before I can upload another story on the blog.