Bananas Keep Me Young

A run-down on field trip #1: Dole Banana Plantation in Sarapiqui.

This is Don Carlos, our tour guide for the day.

He talked for a long time about the history of bananas in Costa Rica, Dole, and the life cycle of the banana plant. I won't bore you with the details but here are some bullet points of the good stuff!

• the banana plant is not a tree, it's an HERB.
• The leaves of the plant grow one under the other, not one ON TOP of the other, until finally the part holding the flowers (which later becomes bananas!) carves through the center from the bottom-up and comes shooting out the top like a torpedo.  
• the plant is 90% water, a single plant can take up 36 liters of water per day.
• Sweden eats the most bananas per person. (42 lbs annually per capita...)

After the lecture we moved into the plantation. One student volunteered to apply the blue plastic bag to a bunch of bananas. The bags are applied to each banana bunch to provide protection from bugs and a perfect micro-climate for optimum growth. We asked, "well that's a lot of plastic, isn't there a better way?". Don Carlos responded, "we do this because the market demands perfect bananas. If consumers were willing to buy bananas that are not the perfect shape or size and have a few brown spots then we could do away with all the plastic. Until then, this is how we do things."

Then Ines and I got our chance to cut down and harvest one of the banana plants! I strapped on Don Carlos's machete and took the harvest stance. Ines was at the ready with her tube to catch the bananas... and then he stopped us. It was all for show, apparently I can't be trusted with a machete!! So they got some professionals to show us instead... probably for the best :)

At last, we ventured to the processing and packaging area. After being harvested, the buunches are hung from an elaborate cable system and pulled by mules to the processing area. They are then hacked off "hand" by hand (a hand is the bunch that comes off the stalk together, usually about 15 bananas.) Then they seperate that into a few bunches which is what you see in the supermarket. They are rinsed in a huge banana swimming pool, the tops are brushed with some liquid that stops the sap of the banana from excreting out of the top of the bunch, branded with a Dole sticker, and packed tightly into boxes bound for export.