Day 9 – Roatán, Honduras

Actually, I saw that word – aquaholic – on a t-shirt and quite liked it. I didn’t buy the shirt because it was overpriced even by American standards.

Here’s the irony: I enjoy scuba diving. I enjoy looking at the fish. I never thought I’d be pulling them out of the water. But what did we decide to do? Go deep-sea fishing of course! I feel like I should feel worse about this; I killed Nemo. But that’s just the circle of life I suppose? I never felt the least bit sorry for that piranha I fished with a bamboo stick in the Amazon so why should this be any different?

There’s a dock right smack in front of our beach house and the fishing boat picked us up there. It was rather lovely to stumble out of bed, walk a hundred feet, and be on a boat. They picked us up at 6:00 AM, all of use except for Annie, whose fear of being on the water nearly counterbalances my love for it. I do love boats, ships, any vessel that transports you over the water. I decided over the course of the day that someday, when I win the lottery, I’m going to buy a sailboat and live my life sailing around the world. That would be bliss.

So the boat picked us up, crewed by two men, Dave and Wilmer, who immediately went about casting out all the lines. I’ve been fishing a total of twice in my life, one of those times being on the Amazon with a bamboo stick, so forgive my scant fishing lingo. Deep-sea fishing is nice because rather than holding the reel for hours and waiting for a bite, you just secure the fishing pole to the boat and drive the boat to drag the lures along. So while this is happening there is plenty of time to sit in the front of the boat and enjoy the roller coaster ride while Dave and Wilmer and Bobby do all the work. Oh, and our neighbor Craig, (leave it to Mom and Bobby to already know everyone staying in all of the neighboring houses; they’re all super sweet people).

As soon as we would hear the sound of the line being pulled out, someone would grab the belt and the fishing pole and reel in the catch. I think we ended up with three mahi mahi, two tuna, a twenty-lb. wahoo, and I brought in a barracuda, which was no small feat, especially for someone my size. I wanted to give it a shot so someone tried to secure the fishing belt around my waist, well it wouldn’t fasten small enough so I ended up with someone holding the pole for me while I tried my best to reel the thing in, which was considerably harder than it looked, but then again I don’t really have any upper body strength.

After a three-hour trip, Dave and Wilmer dropped us off at our dock and set about cleaning and filleting the fish for us. It was quite the spectacle, as curious observers from the beach kept stopping to see what was happening.

I spent the afternoon snorkeling, surprise, surprise, and then in the evening we invited all the neighbors and Dave and Wilmer over for a fish feast. Bobby knew exactly how to prepare them and we had some on the grill, some fried, and some baked in the oven. It was all fantastic and quite a lovely evening.