Bananas and Stone Trees

I learned how to harvest bananas today! A local named Serena has a work-exchange deal where she cooks breakfast and does some harvesting in return for yoga classes, and she took me around the property.

Here's how it's done: first we sharpened the machete (that's right: I said machete), then she showed me where they grow. There are a few groves, and bananas grow in racks, with long, thick, rough stems (for lack of a better word) hanging off the downward end. At the end of the stem is a massive, ugly, purple flower, the color of a really good bruise. When the flower is closed, they aren't ready yet. Eventually the petals start to peal back and fall off. When the flower is gone OR there's a yellow banana in the rack, it's ready to come down. Then you pull the stalk down to your level (the stalk is usually really dry and brittle), and hack the rack off. Then you cut the stalk down so that the nutrients it was using will go to the rest of the banana grove. A whole grove is usually one, or maybe two, actual banana plants.

So we went around the property and she found one almost right away that was ready to come down and showed me how to do it. We continued on our way, and at the end we were standing looking at the jungle, and she said, "well, I have to go. You'll have to go around there to get to those ones and see if there's any ripe on the other side. Don't worry, you have a machete." And she left me staring at the jungle, which as you all know, is exactly the most hilarious thing she could have done. Perhaps needless to say, the first thing I did was walk into a plant with sticky seeds that got all over my clothes and then step in wild boar poop. And there were no bananas, which is just as well because in a couple of days I'm going out to look again, and I'm bringing my camera and a person who will take a picture... I know you all want visual proof that, yes, they really did let me use a machete. :)

Yesterday I went with Virginia and Sue, two 50-something Canadian ladies who are also doing the work-exchange program this month, to Lava Tree National Park, which is just a few minutes west of Yoga Oasis. What happened is the volcano erupted around 1790 and killed this whole forest of trees, but instead of just incinerating them, a lot of the trees ended up being fossilized and the lava hardened around them. Then the earth opened up in big long cracks and drained the rest of the lava... There are signs like the one at the beginning of the post all around the park. Now you can walk through the forest and see the fossilized trees. Some of them you can even see the patterns in the bark. It's really amazing. Some of the pictures are sideways because I haven't figured out how to fix that yet. Does anyone know?

So, pictures! And love to all of you!



Sue caught a picture of me breaking the historical national landmark. Great. :)

These are Sue and Virginia, left to right.
A close up of the bark.
And me. <3