The Garden of Eden once was located exactly here on the tropical Caribbean cost. It is green and fruitful, the sea as radiant blue as the sky and the sun shines particularly bright and friendly on this paradise garden. And the most beautiful fruit of the garden is yellow and softly bent like a smile: The paradise fig, the forbidden fruit of the biblical myth of paradise.
You don’t know this fruit?
Of course you do, probably you ate it as a baby for the first time. It’s the most beautiful berry of the world, the banana - Musa paradisiaca. Or, that’s what we call her, the Sixaola Banana.
Ten up to twenty fingers are one hand - The first records about bananas are over 2.600 years old and date back to India. Arabian traders brought it to Africa, they gave the fruit its name: “Banan” is the Arabian word for finger.
It's the most loved tropical fruit of the Germans, and number two in the favorite fruits ranking list behind the apple.
As a compact source of energy, the banana beats every competitor. Its natural fruit sugar is by far healthier than industrially produced dextrose. A high concentration of minerals like potassium, magnesium as well as phosphor and valuable ingredients like the vitamins A, B, C and E are indispensable for the heart, nerves, muscles and the protein metabolism.
However, people tend to forget that bananas are cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions and often have to make considerable journeys to be enjoyed by people in other parts of the world – which also applies to our Sixaola Bananas:
It takes only about 10 to 12 weeks from the flowering to the final maturation of the fruit on the plant. After the crop the bundles, which weigh up to 30 kilo, are pulled to our packing station by cable winches where they are portioned, washed and packed into banana boxes by hand.
The natural maturing of our bananas is artificially interrupted in refrigerated containers, and they cross the Atlantic on freighters, at a constant temperature of 13.5 °C. After arrival at the port of destination our bananas are, still green, transported to maturing plants and from there distributed to supermarkets by wholesalers.
For over 25 years our team of Platanera Río Sixaola has been dedicated to sustainable agriculture and the cultivation of bananas in the tropics. With our new homepage we now give our bananas a face and want to present the work on our farm in Costa Rica to interested people from all over the world.
Welcome on our farm!
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama