Cuentos de Pesca

We were seated beneath palms and the shade was good. Micheladas were being poured and tasted for the first time; a mixture of spicy tomato juice, cold beer and a kick of aguardiente with ice - that feels (and works) better than it sounds. We'd been sitting by the sea for a couple of hours. A pit stop en route to Veracruz. Ricardo knew the locals; he knew everybody. This was where Spanish had first been uttered in Latin America; the exact stretch of coast where Cortez had come ashore. It was a sleepy beach community. A few fishing boats pulled up along the shore at regular intervals. A few kids splashing in the water, their adults in slow motion life under the shade.
There was a moment of quiet, people all at once throwing their eyes out to sea, gazes darting along the shoreline as more stood up eyes fixed on the water. Then a frenzy of activity; fishermen of all ages ran to their boats with the excitement of schoolboys, grinning and cursing to get the boats ready, the nets aboard, and out to sea. Ricardo curses his friends who hadn't prepared their nets for activity and jumps in to help untangle them and get them coiled. When everything is ready and long after the other boats have taken to the water, we're coaxed into helping shift the heavy wooden boat down its rollers and into the surf.
With the fishermen all out on the water, quietness returns. The echoes of curses and action replaced with the crash of the water against the sand and our feet. We go back to our beers.



We watch the boats become smaller and the men aboard each shrink to dots of black against the blue. Some follow the shoreline, others move further out and around the peninsula, others into deep water. Ricardo paces along the beach unable to rest; watching. Ricardo can see fish in water. In a way that even the other fishermen, fishermen all their lives, cannot. He knows. He breaks into a sprint down the beach towards his friends boat, shouting at them to come into shore and set their nets. A half mile down the beach they begin to drop their net and then move out cutting a huge half circle against the shore, trapping anything inside. Ricardo meanwhile sprints back to the van and re-appears in his wetsuit and goggles and produces a hunting knife. The beer makes me and Michael laugh. Peppi smiles and reassures us that means dinner. Ricardo runs back towards the boat with Aaron and leaves us in peace again.
We're left largely unaware of what happened next until later that evening when Aaron gives us his version. All we see is Ricardo strolling back up the beach twenty minutes later holding a twentyfive pound fish by the gills; a knife plunged into its side. He smiles at us as he throws it at our feet. "Dinner."






No time wasted, Ricardo grabs a plank of driftwood and uses the wet sand to sharpen his blade. With practiced hands he methodically guts and de-scales the fish before removing all the usable meat. We sit back to watch the professional at work.











Michael had arrived the day before flying from South East Asia. The beer helped the jet lag and while we watched Ricardo his head hung heavier and heavier against his chest, no doubt dreaming of the sea.






Once the meat was ready there was only one thing left to do.

México está muy lejos