We Try To Visit Mayan Ruins, and End up In a Banana Plantation Instead
Haven´t blogged for awhile…have been in ¨travel mode¨for quite awhile!
Last off, we were in Copan Ruinas, Honduras, planning on crossing the border the next morning. This time, we did the border crossing differently. For one thing, we found a chicken bus instead of the pricey tourist bus-this proved a difficult task from the first, as the entire town seemed to be in cahoots with the expensive tourist bus companies! But we finally found out where the stop was, and hopped on a mini bus at about 5 am. Making it over the border this time was a piece of cake. We had decided to cross in El Florido, which was the usual route for the tourist buses coming to and fro Antiqua. El Florido was-dare I say it- pleasant. The border crossing was clean, everyone was friendly, and the officials actually stood there to make sure our money was changed properly back into quetzales. It was such a shocking difference, and I was really relieved, to say the least.
Our goal that day was to make it to Quirigua, Guatemala, a town that is close to an archaelogical site of Mayan ruins. It is not as visited as the other sites because it is a bit off the gringo trail. Another reason it is not as visited is it supposedly is not as spectacular as the other sites, as it was until recently not protected from the elements(so the ruins are more worn down). At any rate, we somehow had the most perfect bus connections possible, and ended up in the town by 11am.
The town itself only has two hotels, and we chose the one a bit more out of town. The manager of the hotel kept quoting us rather outrageous prices, and we finally got her down to something that was reasonable. Our room was fabulous….painted lemon yellow , very large, with four (!) enormous beds, all covered in red striped bedspreads. The bathroom was…interesting…an enormous tiled bathtub of blue tile, with only cement cinderblocks with ¨windows¨letting in the light(and whatever else -like bugs!). The water was of course, ice cold.
We took a nap, then decided to grab some lunch, and paid a ridiculous amount for some so- so rice and beans(good to go vegetarian when traveling!). We ate at the only restaraunt in town, at the other hotel. Once we got a glimpse of the other hotel, a sort of dilapidated bright aqua green, peeling paint, and rotten walls, we were glad we had chosen the other hotel to stay at.
Anyway, instead of walking thru town towards the ruins, we decided to take the highway. This turned out to be the long way. The very, very, very long way. It was a beautiful walk though, with such a tropical feeling to it-lots of tropical flowers, trees…children, chickens, and people carrying baskets of maize on their heads on the way to grind it. The walk was so long, that we realized we weren´t going to get to the ruins with much time to spare to really look around for long-and at about the time we realized this, we entered the banana plantations.They lined either side of the highway for miles and miles-as far as the eye could see. People who worked in the plantations were cycling past us, two people perched on a bike, women risding side saddle in their skirts.
We started photographing the banana trees, since the were so beautiful. We were enjoying ourselves so much doing this, that we decided to skip the ruins! We were photographing the trees for about half an hour, when we came across some sort of pulley system of cables going thru the banana trees. Suddenly, a man appeared (the first worker we had seen) and he was sitting in a little seat hanging from midair, being pulled by the cable system we had seen. He smiled and I asked if I could take his picture-he said yes. Then he asked if we wanted to look around the plantation more! This seemed pretty interesting to us, so we followed him into the heart of the plantation, where they process all the bananas.
We were just walking thru the trees, and couldn´t see much except bananas and more bananas, when we suddenly saw the processing plant. It was full of people working, and everyone was really friendly to us. I was hestitant to look around too much, or photograph too much, but everyone kept saying it wqas no problem. So I got to look around at the whole plant and the whole process.
The plantation and the plasnt were originally owned by the United Fruit Company, until it´s interests were taken over by Del Monte. So everyone was processing the bananas for the Del Monte company, whose market is the USA. I would say it was clean people seemed to get breaks and so on..but the workers had to work very fast, as machines were there and it was assembly-line work. The work of some of the men in particular seemed back breaking. The workers all seemed very poor-they probably couldn´t afford to eat many of the bananas they were processing.
Here´s the whole process: The bananas are grown in bunches on the trees, and when they are getting close to being harvested they get covered in a blue paper bag. People then come thru the trees, and cut the bunches down, and they get attached onto the aforementioned pulley system. The bananas never touch the ground. Then there is a man who operates the pulley system and he carries them thru the entire plantation to the plant. He sits in a little motorized chair on the front. There are about 5 or six pulleys going on at the same time. so it´s a bit chaotic, and everything has to be perfectly timed.
Before the bananas enter the plant, they all get counted. There is a guy that just stands by the spot where the bananas get washed off (what they are washing off, who knows) on this little platform and counts bananas all day. After they get counted, they go into this open sided building where they dry. This is probably the coolest place, temperature wise, in the whole place-and lots of men taking their lunch breaks in here, usually of a few small tortillas spread with black beans, and not much else.
After they dry, the pulley system takes them into the heart of the plant. A machine takes them apart from the main bunch, and they get grouped into little bunches. These then get dipped into enormous vats of clear liquid-I asked what it was, and one of the workers told me it was water. (but, it obviously wasn´t-as there were two vats above each tank, labeled with chemicals, and the bananas had an un-natural sheen when they came out of the vats eventually). The bananas stay in the vats for about 1/2 an hour, then the machine lifts them out, and they get moved to two areas.
The first area is for the ¨good¨bananas…here they get packed into banana boxes. This seemed to be women´s work, as in this area, there were only women. They were all indigenous women, wearing knee length woven skirts and t shirts or tank tops. The youngest in age was about twelve years old. The women worked so fast, you couldn´t see their hands at all-just a flurry of green bananas. At the same time as the bananas are arriving, the boxes are arriving, on a cable with clips in the air. The women have to reach up, grab a box, and fill it with bananas before the next box arrives. It was very fast, very exhausting work. They talked as they worked.
The second area the bananas went is for the ¨bad¨bananas-these are lower grade, and they aren´t in bunches-they are separate. These move along a platform towards a truck, where 3 boys stood perched on top of the truck. Their job was to put The single bananas in the truck. There were just flying bananas all over the place. The workers in this area were very young-probably no more than 14 years old. It was hot, and they all had their shirts off. No one seemed to take a break much or stop and drink any water. There were alot of bananas on the ground as well.
The area where the boxes were made was the same as the area where the bananas were loaded onto the waiting truck. There was a machine that made the boxes-one man ran the cable system above to send the boxes to the assembly line where the women were. The machine that made the boxes made 8 or so at a time, and several men had to quickly work to lift the boxes off the machine very quickly. This part of the work was entirely done by men, all who had their shirts off and were sweating buckets. They were really friendly, and all wanted their pictures taken. There were also banana counters in this area, and alot of ¨bosses¨-you could tell that they were in positions of authority, becuase their clothes were nicer, and they kept their shirts on. They seemed fine with us being there, too.
Once thru the plant, we were walking along the backside of the building, when we spotteds the truckdriver of the large semi -taking a nap on a hammock, underneath his truck!
We ended up spending along time at the plant, just hanging around and watching the process. It was really eyeopening, in that the conditions seemed very difficult. At the same time, everyone was really nice to us-that amazing Guatemalan hospitality. I was absolutely pleased with the day, because it seemed like this experience(once again) landed in our laps.
gg
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