Tagua - The apocalypse seed

One of the biggest (insert word kinda like handicraft but not, I have a mind blank!) of Colombia is products made from a seed called tagua. When they pick the seeds from a palm tree, the inside is liquid, but if they leave them for a few years, the inside becomes solid. They then use this to make all sorts of items, from nativity sets to keyrings. It's a real skill to work these seeds, and we were privileged enough to have a demonstration from a craftsman in a workshop in Tinjacá. These seeds have 90% of the properties of marble and 97% of the hardness of ivory. It also has special heat absorbing properties so apparently you can wrap your hair around it and put it in a flame and it wouldn't burn as the tagua would absorb the heat (we didn't test this - Josh reckons this is how the burning bush in the bible worked!). This is why we have named it the apocalypse seed as they think you could survive it in a shelter made from tagua!!