The Maui Flea Market is a combination street fair and farmer’s market. From handcarved Koa utensils to passionfruit-flavored butter to knockoff Nike swoosh T-shirts to heaps of organic fruit, the 50¢ entry fee covers a lot of ground.
My favorite booth was staffed by an enormous Hawaiian woman and her equally huge machete. Piled on a table to her front, and filling the bed of a pickup to her rear were hundreds of young coconuts. The woman’s partner, an elderly man sacked out in the front seat of the pickup with his flip-flops hanging out the driver’s side window, prepped the nuts by whacking off the green husk with a large carving knife… but only after being bellowed at by the woman, who was running out of stock.
$3 buys a coconut, served with one tip expertly chopped off, and two straws. Most customers simply drank the water and ditched the coconut, but we stuck around to have the nuts split open (no extra charge) so we could scrape out the meat with a sharp piece of shell. If you get a really young one, the insides are still jelly.
Photos from Maui
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posted to channel: Travel
updated: 2005-12-03 09:36:55
