Behind the tiny Venezuelan beach village of Playa Chuao is a massive banana plantation. For some reason this fascinated the Italian and me. And so, when we disembarked from a fishing boat we had hired to take us to Playa Chuao, we walked right past the beach and the small village and into the banana plantation to check it out.

The colonial town of Chuao, a few kilometers inland, is known for producing some of the world’s best cacao, but we were interested in bananas.

The road inland through the banana plantation:

This is how the locals get to work in the plantation. And you’re welcome to catch a ride yourself if you want one:

Banana trees:

I’ll bet you didn’t know bananas grew on something that looks like this, did you?

The areas not planted over with banana trees are quite dense which helps keep moisture in the air and to keep the overall temperature of the valley lower:

The water that isn’t delivered to the bananas via rain comes from this river through a complex system of irrigation channels:

Rows of young banana trees ready to be planted:

We walked for over an hour through the banana plantation and still there was no end in sight.

Aware of the fact that every step we took forward in the oppressive heat was one we would have to take back, we eventually turned back after crossing the river.