We went on an expedition for fish the other day. It was a great success, because we accomplished it. It would have been a failure otherwise. Think about what buying fish looks like for you. It certainly starts at the grocery store. Perhaps you grab a bag from the frozen section. Maybe, if you’re feeling particularly social, you will go to the fish cabinet and get a pound of clams.
That was our experience, also. While we were in the states. Here in Panama, things are a bit different. Truly, our expedition began the day before when we ventured to a house that purportedly sold local fish. It looked like this:
If you look closely, you will see a tiny sign on the front of the building advertising seafood. This is just a lady’s house. I can’t remember her name now, but let’s say it was “Ruthie”. Day 1, we walked up to her house and Ruthie was sitting on the porch with a guy. Maybe “Johnathan”? We asked her if we could buy shrimp or prawns from her (in VERY broken Spanish), and she said that she could have them to us in 30 minutes. While we were not ready for them at that exact moment (it was late in the day, and waiting for half an hour at her house with Johnathan felt a little weird), we asked her if we could get them the next morning. Ruthie was cool with that, so we will fast forward to then.
Next day, Ruthie was inside her house, and so that’s where we met her. In her living room. We just walked in. She had our 2 pounds of shrimp ready to go in a baggie, and she emphatically let us know that it would be $8, not the $10 she had previously quoted us. She could only get 2 lbs, not 2.2 like we had agreed. This was no problem, because 2 pounds of shrimp is still a lot. We exchanged money and she talked a lot to us about Red Snapper. The fish. We were not sure at all what she said, but she seemed very excited. We got excited too, but also very confused; so we agreed to leave.
Feeling chuffed with ourselves, we decided to take a detour from going straight home to try and find a path to a beach near us that we knew was frequented with fishing boats. You see, in Panama, the fishing boats arrive on the beach at 9-ish and 5-ish. This is a fact that we had yet to test. It was kind of rumor to us at the point when we figured we would go look for ourselves.
Side note: it was hot as balls, and we had already walked about a mile to and from Ruthie’s house. We were starting to chafe.
We had been given instruction to “keep going until you come to the stinky trash can, and turn left”. I’m not kidding about this. They were right. About the trash can, at least. It smelled like rotten fish, as it was filled with rotten fish! On the beach, there were approximately eight boats with approximately twenty scary fisherman standing around them. Once we started in their direction, it was clear that they were our destination. We could not turn back, lest we commit social suicide.
But! I’m glad we had no other option. We stopped at a boat, and they opened up their holding tank to us. It had a bunch of big, silver fish, and seven prawns. Since we were rich with sea spiders from Ruthie, we decided on two silver fish. He gave them to us and pointed up towards some huts. We walked there. Someone else took our fish and weighed them, and told us that we owed them $6. This was a deal to us, so we payed them. Also: what else would we do? Run away?
They could tell that we were gringos, so they pointed us to the one guy who spoke English. He did not, in fact, speak English. In retrospect, it seems kinda funny. He knew enough to fool them, but not enough to fool us. He looked sheepish because he understood this, as well.
We told them that we wanted the fish filleted, and they told us that it would change the price. We found out that they exaggerated that point when, after filleting the fish, the toothless guy asked for $1 like he was robbing us blind. We happily complied, and he felt like he took us for everything we owned.
The fish ended up being really good. We cooked it with garlic, butter, and olive oil. I’m not really into that whole, “lemon on seafood” thing.
I considered the whole thing a big win.
the eventually home 