Old wives tales are many, my excuse for falling for a coconut water drinking fad. In Ecuador it seems coconuts grow on trees….

During my recent trip to Ecuador, every afternoon just clearing the last breakfast tables from my wife's new restaurant venture, she would get a clear plastic glass of what I thought was water in one hand. In the other, she'd pick up a mysterious looking fleshy white and brown mottled thing in a plastic bag. When I asked her what it was, she told me agua de coco ' or coconut water.

According to my wife, it's said to help clean the kidneys. Googling,I found that it supposedly also helps strengthen the immune system. It is low in fat, no carbs, etc. Reading about it, I think of those 19th century medicine shows or 20th century New Age miracle cures.  Whatever, I started to like it, finding it refreshing. Soon I was ordering a daily cup.

Somehow I grabbed the coco water seller's attention. And to be sort of polite and semi-interested, I snapped a few shots of the fellow, his cart barely full of coconuts. Business must be good?

The next day I managed some head shots, props provided by my wife; a polo shirt and panama hat. She's so silly! And as if he didn't get enough attention, I bumped into him on the beach where the fishermen were unloading the catch. "Amigo!" he said, and smoothly pulled up his machete, posing through a fully stocked coconut patch and smiled….

Our cook, Sonia, told me later he was vanquisher of hearts a sort of mujeriero, a machete wielding Casanova, breaking coconuts and releasing nectar. You get the point, or maybe you don't. Anyway, I will miss his fresh coco water, as it is, I am now left to buy those cartons they sell at all the supermarkets for five times the price, it just ain't the same animal!