The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [54]
Landing these fish on a small boat in open sea with a hand line takes considerable strength and stamina, and the battles may last ten minutes or longer. Some of these fish are strong enough to haul these boats; some are stronger than the forty-horsepower engine.
It is a culture of the-one-that-got-away stories, which was also the basis for Hemingway’s novel. Edwin and his friend Ramón Fernández, known in Punta de Pescadores as Sanbobi, once hooked what they estimated to be a thousand-pound blue marlin. It was clearly longer than their boat. Sanbobi hooked it on a steel cable and was so jubilant that he could not stop laughing and joking. The more somber Edwin, operating the boat, just said repeatedly, “That’s a lot of money out there.” But Sanbobi had the giant by a steel cable, and so he kept laughing as he struggled to bring it in until finally the marlin did the impossible and snapped the cable, swimming free.
Both Sanbobi and Edwin had for the time being given up on deep-sea fishing because of the cost of gasoline and instead were finding smaller fish closer to shore. But there were no fish in the mangroves, the rooty growth along the banks of the Higuamo where oysters used to grow before the pollution killed them. Sanbobi still believed he was better off than his father, who was a worker for the Cristóbal Colón mill. Of fishing he said, “It’s cash every day,” in contrast to his father’s seasonal employment.
The fishermen went out in the morning. In the afternoon the action switched to the other side of the river in downtown San Pedro, where the fish were taken to market, most of them stored at extremely low temperatures in walk-in freezers—a precarious business in a country known for power outages. The fishermen putt-putted back from sea and up the river with about five fish, four to seven feet long, tying up at a concrete landing with corrugated metal roofs. The fish were gutted and then hefted onto a large basket made of steel concrete-reinforcement rods and hung on a scale. Prices varied depending on the fish. A gruff man playing dominos on the dock explained dryly, “Fish are all different. Women are all the same.” The men all laugh.
Everything—gutted fish, shelled conch, and bags of clawless tropical spiny lobsters and crabs—was immediately dragged into the freezers, their floors covered in bloody ice. Fresh fish is not a commercial concept in the tropics.
The best place to eat fish in San Pedro was the Robby Mar, which started in 1989 on the river next to the fish market. It had a pleasant white tableclothed terrace with a view of the river and its dense, tangled mangroves. Neither stuffy-pretentious nor downscale-ugly, which are the two usual choices, it would have been popular with tourists, but tourists did not turn up very often for a meal in local restaurants because the price of a room in a resort hotel included all meals. The tourism industry did not want tourists straying away from the resorts: something might happen to them, and that would be bad for tourism.
Without tourists, Robby Mar, located near much of the city government, did lunches for government officials, who—baseball players aside—had the best jobs in San Pedro. On some days half of the restaurant was taken over by the town fire department—some twenty men and women in white uniforms with dazzling arrays of metals and battle ribbons on their chests. After a few guavaberries, everyone just had to hope that no fires started during lunchtime.
The restaurant specialized in local seafood with a long menu that included some rare specialties and some very popular San Pedro dishes, such as congrejos al ajillo.
Grind garlic in a food processor with salt and oil. If you have olive oil, it’s much better. Boil crabs, take out meat, cook with a little butter and add garlic sauce. The same recipe can be used with fish.
But this whole world might be ending: the San Pedro of fishermen and waterfront, the original San Pedro before baseball, sugar, and even poets. Sanbobi gave Punta de Pescadores at most twenty more years. “Kids just aren’t becoming