Lobster, Mud and Decent Waves

When last I wrote, I had just acquired some 15 lobsters from a local fisherman. I took 5 of the lobsters and boiled them in pot of salty water. I served them plain with a little butter and kept the shells for later. That night, I sautéed some carrots, onions and celery with the shells from earlier and a few heads from the remaining lobsters. I added Chilean white wine, salt and pepper and let the whole concoction bubble away. Meanwhile, I boiled the remaining lobster tails, and set them aside once cooked.

After a solid hour of simmering, with the aid of a strainer made from a 5 litre water bottle with a few holes poked into the bottom, I drained the shell mixture and discarded the solid contents. I reduced the resulting liquid and added some cream. I tore up the lobster tails and boiled some pasta. Once the pasta was cooked I added the lobster meat to the sauce and served it on top of the freshly cooked pasta. To say it was a sumptuous feast for the 5 of us would be an understatement. It turned out far better than I expected. My biggest regret was that there wasn't any more for the days following.

My cooking adventures have been curtailed of late by the invasion of messy Scandinavians at the hostel. They cook, but don't clean up; I along with everyone else have grown tired of asking them to clean up, or doing it for them. So, I have returned to the local fare. The supermarkets have a real paucity of local food, and far too many goods imported from the US and Canada. Betty Crocker cake mix is readily available, as is Smuckers jam and JIF peanut butter and Canadian made Nutella to name but a few. Limes on the other hard can be impossible to find. I'm not complaining, just surprised.

Yesterday, fed up with surfing the swell starved reef breaks we decided to make the trek over to the Island of Bastimentos and up over a hill to the swell catching beach breaks on the other side. This was unequivocally a mistake. It has been mainlining heavily and daily for over a week here, the result of so much water can best be described as resembling a lava flow of human excrement. I apologize for the graphic description, but it really does capture what the trail no looked like. The mud was, at points, knee deep, although more often it was only shin to ankle deep. In patches where the sun shone threw the mud had been warmed to a surprising degree, making my previous analogy all the more pertinent and simultaneously distressing. Of course, in parts the trail shallowed out just enough to make it feel like a skating rink. Given that gravity holds sway over water, this tended to be on climbs or descents, just where it was least welcome. The trail ploughed on over hill and through dense jungle, where the humidity made the sweat drip off all of us. Still, one by one, we made it over the hill and down to the pristine beach where the waves of legend awaited us, right?

Not a chance. The beach was stunning and for once the sun came out, but the waves were lack lustre and disappointing, they were definitely not worth the hike. But the sun was shining and my thoughts on more than one occasion reminded me where I could be right now, and so I smiled and enjoyed what was there.

Today the much anticipated swell finally arrived. I took a boat out to the reef break on the leeward side of Isla Caranero and hopped in. The swell was clearly larger, but the wave still didn't seem to be working properly. Still it was fun. After approximately one hour, it was as if someone flipped a switch, the waves glassed off and began to roll through. The occasional wave even began to barrel. I caught wave after wave and tried desperately to pull into the barrel, but never seemed to get it right. Once, had I been a little better balanced during the take off the barrel would have been a given, but I fell too far behind and the wave left me in its wake.

Word spreads quickly when the waves are working and the line-up began to fill with surfers. A couple of Argentineans seemed way out of their depth and almost hit each other almost every time they tried for a wave. It was comical, but only because they were doing it to each other and not to me. Then, as suddenly as it had started the waves returned to their former shape. I caught the next boat in and ravenously devoured a little Pollo com arroz.

And now, I think I'll get in a sunset surf.

Bocas Del Toro, Panama

I am currently on the island or more accurately the archipelago of Bocas del Toro. Originally settled by United Fruit as a gateway to its Banana plantations, the island now survives on a combination of tourism and real estate. The population is diverse consisting predominantly of indigenous locals, European descendants, Afro-Antillos and Chinese. The latter two groups arrived during the construction of the Panama Canal along with the Americans. (A sizable number of Americans remained behind in Panama City and are now called Zonians, the moniker was derived from the now extinct U.S. Zone around the Panama Canal, but I digress ... )

My hostel is a ramshackle wooden building with a corrugated iron roof; its large deck, and the majority of the building for that matter, extend out over the ocean. The practice is standard throughout the islands due, in part, to the almost non existent tidal variation and makes for quaint and picturesque shorelines.

The waves have been decent and I have managed to get four days of surfing in, including one particularly pleasurable wave that left me with perma-grin for a solid 24 hours. The swell has dropped recently allowing me some time to read, write my in journal and relax. The drop has also coincided with the mild aggravation of an old injury and so is, at least to a degree, welcome.

I am contemplating a visit to the mountain town of Boquete, renowned for its coffee and flowers while I wait for a new swell, but for now I am content to remain here.

I have found the Panamanians approach everything with what might politely be called a lack of urgency; it appears they have adopted their Caribbean neighbours approach to the rigours of daily life. As you might expect, Panamanians do wear Panama hats and immaculately pressed linen shirts. Oddly, however, the hats are made in Ecuador.

Akin to the rest of Latin America the staple diet consist of arroz y frijoles or beans and rice with some kind of protein, usually chicken. The food is not as bland as I expected and on the Caribbean side there are some wonderful hot sauces available to make up for the lack of spices used in the cooking.

As I sat typing this, a local paddled by in a dugout. Having heard some rumours I yelled out to see if he had any lobster. 'Yes' came the smiling reply. As he drew closer, I could see that the bottom of the dugout had some 15 medium sized cray fish, mine for a mere 20 USD. To put this in perspective one of the local restaurants sells one butterflied tail for 22 USD. So for now at least I am going stop to put on a pot of boiling water and enjoy some fresh Lagosta

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