When I first made the move to the Dominican Republic I wasn’t really sure what I was getting into. I had come to the island many times before but I had never been here more than a month or two, and was always with my immediate family. Also, since we were on vacation, the way we saw and lived in town was completely different.

My first year here I spent buying plastic one liter water bottles and refilling them until I felt like there was enough chemicals seeping into my water. When I came back to the states to visit I had one thing in mind and that was to get myself a reusable water bottle that wasn’t slowly poisoning me and the environment. After my fair share of research I settled with getting a Klean Kanteen
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I wanted something that was big enough to fit ice cubes inside as well as something that I wouldn’t have to re-fill every hour. I ended up getting the 40 oz wide mouth version and for the first few months I liked it, but it was just a regular stainless steel water bottle to me. I would draw on it occasionally with a permanent marker and within a couple of weeks my drawings would disappear. It wasn’t until I was star gazing and dropped it from the roof, onto a hard floor, that I realized exactly how durable this thing was.

So far I’ve dropped it off of a roof three times and even dropped it on a paved road, from my motorcycle, while traveling around 30-40 mph (60-70 kph). My immediate reaction was a big “OH SH#T” followed by, please be okay, please be okay. I quickly turned around and sped back to where I had dropped it as I had to take advantage that no cars were on the road at the time. I picked it up, pulled over to the side of the road and examined my kanteen. To my surprise it was STILL INTACT!!! Yea it has its fair share of dents and scratches but it still stands up straight (kind of) and still holds a full Kanteen of water without any of it spilling out. I’d like to add that since writing this I dropped it once more on the pavement but was driving much slower. 

My Klean Kanteen review summed up:

PROS:

• Built tough
• Stainless Steel makes for easy cleaning
• Wide mouth for easy pouring
• Can be used to cook over a fire (without plastic cap on of course)
• No chemicals seeping into your water

CONS:

• Wide mouth makes for uncomfortable drinking in moving vehicles.
• Easily builds mold as no light comes in to the kanteen (washing frequently will completely avoid this problem).

AWESOME TIP:

Put a bag of tea with some water in your Klean Kanteen, leave it in the sun for about 20 minutes and VOILA! You have some fresh tea heated up with the goodness of the sun.

OVERALL:

If you’re looking for a lightweight, durable, multipurpose water bottle then this is a great buy. They also have a multitude of other styles, drinking caps and colors if you’re looking to switch it up a bit. Another thing is that if you’re ever in a situation where you need to boil some water, the kanteen works for that as well. Given you have to remove the rubber cap but the rest is ok to heat up.

New Info 3-14-2014:

I’d like to add that my brother bought one of these and dropped it very lightly on the ground. When it hit the thing split open. He took it back to the shop and they gave him a new one, no questions asked. =)

If you want to buy one of these Klean Kanteen Wide Mouth Bottles for yourself, follow that link!