BANANAS MAKE BETTER HAIR CURLERS

It doesn’t matter if you’re in Perryville, Missouri or in San German, Puerto Rico Murphy’s Law is international: If you’re going to run out of hair conditioner, you’re going to run out of hair conditioner in a town where you can’t buy another of your favorite brand. This is especially troubling because there is no better place to pamper your body into perfection than in a tiny town that closes up shop after sunset.

Of course, Perryville doesn’t have a rustic country inn like Parador Oasis in San German, although being out in the Midwestern countryside is akin to being out on the island of Puerto Rico: Rural spaces are a couple of hours away from big city lights. (San Juan’s 2 million people are cater-cornered across the island from San German, and Mayaguez is 30 minutes away). Black, starry skies fill the night and nature fills your senses, mostly because not much else goes on after dark.

I’d spent my day beach walking with no one else in sight at Boqueron, a colorful fishing village. And last night I’d hung out at nearby Phosphorescent Bay watching its remarkable aqua light show, and well, the great Midwest and Puerto Rico may not really be so much alike.

Because I can always find something to do at home or in the most out-of-the-way places that I travel to, solo travel affords me an occasional treat that rarely happens at home: Some evenings are devoted to me, personally.

I love it. This means a night to pluck eyebrows; a face mask. You know, all those girly things we’ve been conditioned to believe make us look more beautiful. Well, anyway, they make some of us feel better about ourselves.

A massage would have been nice, but with no professional services available, my own neck and scalp stroking in the form of a self-shampoo and hair conditioning would have to suffice.

So, about that favorite hair conditioner: I was out of it. I figured the time was right to try a natural recipe I had recently read about in a travel magazine. A mix of bananas and honey loads your locks with vitamins A, B, C and potassium.

It sounds oh, so healthful.

Parador Oasis’ lovely restaurant stayed open ‘til 10 p.m., and the kitchen staff was more than happy to offer up two bananas and a tablespoon full of honey. No problem

In the privacy of my room, I mashed and mixed and lopped the goop onto my hair (read: long hair), and generally, fooled around with this wonderful smelling blend of natural foods that should have been a midnight snack. Interestingly enough, something happened in the mixing process to take the stickiness out of the honey. A benefit, no doubt, that kept my hair from turning into a sculptural piece of glued fiber. On the other hand, the natural fiber of the bananas wasn’t quite so cooperative.

Today, when I think of bananas I think of fiber…that fine, stringy, threadlike substance that adds texture to an already textured head of hair. Funny how I never had this perception of bananas before that night of conditioning.

Nor at any time before that night did I think of banana fiber as naked, soft bodied annelids. There was something about the little black seeds in the heart of the bananas that seemed to wind up on the very end of each banana fiber that was tangled in my hair.

The effect in the mirror? Little worms in my tangled hair. More little worms than even a very bad, bad woman should have to spend the night with.

Three washings and a lot of hair combing later, most of the banana fibers were gone. Especially after my hair dried, the fibrous stuff brushed out pretty well. Indeed, there were banana bits to the left of me; banana bits to the right. Had I tried this stunt at home in Key West, my bathroom would have been overrun with ants. In the tropics, ants salvage anything that even remotely suggests food, protein, sugar or the like. In fact, it was a rather sleepless night, that night in San German; wondering if the honey really had disappeared without a trace. You see, every western movie of Indian torture using ants that eat people alive ran though my brain.

Sometimes I think the true joy of travel is the freedom to try something we would never do at home; the wild hair hidden in us that needs a little conditioning every year or so on vacation; the really stupid things we do when somebody else has to clean up the mess.

According to the travel magazine, silky, manageable hair can also be acquired through an avocado and sour cream blend, if you happen to be in a country that grows avocados, or near a restaurant or store that sells sour cream at midnight.

It’s hard to imagine that avocados and sour cream could produce a more sleepless night, but until I’ve tried something once, I hesitate to recommend it to you; natural or not.

My official recommendation? Use bananas for hair curlers and wait until you get home to condition your hair with that favorite manmade product.


By Barbara Bowers © 1995