I've never met a European yet (we're "Europeans" in Pacific parlance) who can climb a coconut tree and opening a nut in such a way as to permit you to drink the contents without a sharp bush knife and the knowledge of how to do it is almost impossible.
I have seen them harvest many a coconut tree in Panama. They had a bamboo like pole with a sharpened blade on the end that was about the size of 8-10" circle cut in half with a tail in the middle that stuck into the pole. The curved area at the top was sharp and they would push it in between the coconuts to release them. On the real tall trees they have attachments that strap to their legs with spikes in them. They would position them so that the spikes were on the insides of the legs and climb them similiar to what our polemen do on telephone poles here in the states. Of course there are also the ones on the ground that have fallen off naturally but then in Panama there are no crabs to compete with.
We used to buy them out of the cooler of local roadsides stands (they are a great hangover cure) and the proprietor takes a machette and hacks off a chunk about 2-3" in diameter, sticks a straw in it, and your off.
We used to joke about how good the proprietor was at opening coconuts by how many fingers they still had.
Short and long of it. Getting them would have been extremely difficult, opening them without losing the milk can be done by boring into it by using a knife and a twisting motion but not easily. Could be what busted the pocket knife apart or at least loosened it up enough where it was more useful sans the handle.
LTM,
Don