This weekend has been quite the adventure... and it is only Saturday afternoon! Because I have so much to share, I am going to create this weekend's blog in sections. To start off, yesterday morning we drove up to Guapiles where we visited a couple farms. These farms were definitely not like anything I've seen in Illinois, though. First we stopped at a Dole Banana Plantation. Wow! It was amazing!! The whole system is a lot more complicated than just picking some bananas and throwing them in a box like I expected. As the bananas are tracked by their age, they are placed in blue bags (while still hanging) to protect them from bugs, birds, and to keep them the perfect temperature. There are series of... well, I guess it is easiest to call them ziplines... and when the bananas are ready, they hang them from this zipline. A man then ties a rope to his back and pulls about 15 HUGE bunches of bananas along this line into the company. After that, there is a huge inspection process to make sure the bananas are ripe enough, but not too ripe because they need to ripen just right when they reach the U.S.. The Bananas are then cleaned, the bad ones are again weeded out, boxed, weighed, and shipped off to you guys back home!
One of the funniest things I learned about the bananas is that if they bananas are too ripe and would be browning by the time they get sent to us, they are sold to Chiquita Banana company to turn into baby food. Hey, at least they don't go to waste! One of the best parts about the trip was that the guide gave us ALL a free bunch of bananas! Also, in Costa Rica they call them "bananOs."
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