I CAUGHT THE FISH!

Though I’ve beaten particular Dominicans at dominoes more times than they’ve beaten me, they like to tell me how terrible at the game I am, and in general think I’m pretty crazy, and terrible at a lot of things. And it’s not just some selected individuals, it’s pretty much everyone. One moment they see me do something they don’t understand, perhaps I throw down a domino that they wouldn’t have, or use a seat belt in a car, and the next minute I’m kicking their butt at that hand of dominoes, or am the only person not jolting forward in the car when someone slams on the breaks. Defeating people who were rude to me, or in front of me because they think I don’t understand Spanish, was what I thought was the greatest feeling in the world.

But I found another one. It’s when you go out fishing for hours, trying different types of bait, in different areas, with a guide who seems just as surprised that nothing is biting as your know-it-all friend who took you out, having people walk you through every step of casting a line multiple times (even though all of the steps are pretty easy) because they think that you’re a bumbling fool, and no one is having any luck. And then, you’re the only person in the boat, of all locals who are experienced fishermen, who catches something! Now, I shouldn’t say they didn’t catch anything. In our group of me, my friend who spoils me, and 2 guides, one of the guides caught a very small fish, and the other 2 had crabs on their lines that they wouldn’t even let in the boat because their such a nuisance. So, it’s not that I’m the only one who caught something; it’s that I’m the only one who caught something large.

Catching the fish came after playing dominoes with the same group. My friend who thinks he’s an expert and is always telling me how to play “ better” wasn’t on my team because he thought this other guy was the best and he thought I, the worst, should play on the team with the best, and he would play with another guy. On the game for my team they bet yogurt and cheese (only in the DR) and rum for my alcoholic friend and his partner. Well I’m happy to say that my friend will be buying my former domino partner some yogurt and cheese, because we won. Not only did we win, but I won more times than my apparently “expert” partner.

I took some triumphant pictures with the dead animal, which is very scary-looking, by the way. Part of me wanted to name it, but I was supposed to eat it the next day and I didn’t feel right eating something I’d named. But more relevantly, I don’t feel right naming something that looks like this thing. It’s long and slimy and doesn’t have any fins and has a pointy face with razor-sharp-pointy-teeth. It looks like an eel. (Oh! I saw my first real-life jelly fish today! It got stuck on my line for a moment. They look a lot like they did in Finding Nemo and in SpongeBob except that the one I saw wasn’t pink, it was clear with black outlines.)

We went out to fish twice, once in the morning-afternoon, and once at dusk which turned into night very soon after we went out. I didn’t think the latter trip made a whole lot of sense because it would get awfully dark awfully fast and then what would we do? Well apparently I would catch the fish, but even more importantly is that I would be able to see an incredible amount of stars which followed a breathtaking sunset. But we really were just sitting in the boat, and waiting, in the dark.

Something else that turned out to be a downside to fishing at night was having everyone tell me that unlike the only other fish I’ve caught in my life (a poisonous fish out of the Mississippi River, wait, isn’t that redundant?) I could actually eat this one. Well it turns out that on closer inspection no one but sharks eat this sort of fish. I must say I’m a bit glad because it really was eel-like and I sort of didn’t want to eat it. Also I thought they’d make me eat it alone and even if it was “just” 2 pounds or so, I didn’t want to eat 2 pounds of scary-fish. I guess I’d be more relieved still if I hadn’t also just found out that shark-food is in the place where I spent all day floating around in a boat. Oh well.