Enough of Bananas!

---

So so sorry for the lack of updates!! It seemed that every time I wanted to go on the internet at the hostel, someone else beat me to it, so I'm going to blame it solely on that...... and well, laziness, although after the long days of work I did go for a half hour run most days.

The first week on the farm, I sanded a boat with my good friend Joachim from Norway, and I also planted sweet potatoes with Nicole and Tenielle. I was absolutely exausted after that first week. It was hard work, but well earned money came with it, so that made it somewhat bearable. The second and third week I was on a banana farm, dipping the ends of bananas in red wax. This was the farm's trademark to show the bananas were "Eco-friendly". These were the most boring nine and a half hour days I have ever experienced!!!! I was lucky enough to work with my friends Patrick from Scottland, and Franzi from Germany. I got to improve my German while working with Franzi, so that was a bonus. The boss didn't treat backpackers very well, but him and I got along fairly well. I could've sworn I was going to be fired any day, because whenever he tried to move me for talking too much, I always said "No, I like it here", and then would just turn around and hope he didn't argue further. It actually worked most of the time, because he'd just laugh and walk away. I think he thought it was funny that I went from working at a bank to working on a banana farm. Surprisingly, he was actually pretty sad when I quit, and told me I would have my job back if I ever decided to come back. I'm never going back though.

When I wasn't dipping bananas in red wax, that by the end of the day covered my feet, I was injecting diesel into old banana trees with Patrick, Risto (from Finnland), and Ranna (a worker from India who has lived here for ten years, but can barely speak a word of english). It was actually alot of fun, because Ranna liked to talk alot, so Patrick and I would plan out what kind of questions we'd ask him on our 5 minute breaks, and he would start blabbering on in a mixture of english and punjabi, which made our breaks about 20 minutes. It was quite funny, because his answer to everything was "sometimes, maybe". I would ask him where India was located, and if it was near Russia or Europe (just as a joke), and his answers always started with "sometimes maybe". It was hilarious! Patrick and I definitely had a good laugh the whole day.

The plus side of things was that we got free bananas all the time, which was nice, because due to the cyclone, bananas were about $13 per kilo, so I always took the mutant bananas home. These were the ones that grew as double or tripple bananas. I think I'll start buying apples now though. Three weeks of non stop bananas is enough for a while!

On Friday, Patrick, Franzi and I left for Townsville. They flew to Brisbane to find work, while I received some cash-in-hand work, so ended up staying longer than I had planned. I saw magnetic Island, which was beautiful! I bummed around on the beach for the day with Brian, a Canadian from Vancouver. It was a nice trip, especially being I got my $30 ticket for free!!!!

I'm now headed down the east coast to Airlie beach, where I'll jump on a sail boat for a couple of days, catch up on some sunbaking, and hopefully rest as well.

I promise I'll try my hardest to keep my blog up to date from now on!!!

Marie 😊

---