Hollywood has given the piranha a pretty scary reputation, so I had to try the crew excursion to Lake Maipu, to fish for the nasty critters, maybe dine on them later.I’ve never had much love for fishing, and this expedition did nothing to change that. Of the 44 people on this tour boat, only 7 managed to hook a piranha, and I am not one of them.
After a long and leisurely cruise up a little Amazon tributary, there was about an hour of fishing. Most of the piranha were caught in the first 20 minutes, with happy cheers from the group.
Then things died down. It seemed like the piranha realized what was going on, and evacuated the area.I made a 45-minute effort, and my thoughts changed along the way. Something like “Hey this is fun…hey somebody caught a fish…YAY…hey maybe I’m next…hey somebody else caught a fish…yay…maybe I’m in the wrong spot…hey 3 more people caught fish, this is getting annoying…maybe I need a fresh piece of bait…hey nobody’s caught any fish for a while, it’s getting kinda quiet on this boat…running out of time gotta catch a fish gotta catch a fish gotta catch a fish…well no, actually I don’t HAVE to catch a fish…OK I’m done with this crap, when are we going back?”
But it was a pleasant outing, with good weather and interesting scenery.
Failing to hook a live angry piranha, many of us consoled ourselves by purchasing the very dead, mounted, acrylic coated version. There were many vendors alongside the Veendam when we got back, and the $2 mounted piranha were selling like hotcakes.
Veendam docked at Santerem, with an Amazon tour boat nearby
2 comments:
Whoa, those are some piranha chops - ouch! Love the internal 'while fishing' dialogue - hilarious. The photos give a little taste of Amazon scenery. All that time in Brazil and we never did see any of the Amazon. A future trip no doubt.
The rest of the story. Dreyfus was retried in 1899 and found guilty again. However, the French president pardoned him so he should have left Devil's Island at that time. The 1906 date was a result of the continued work of Zola and supporters at which time Dreyfus was re-instated as an officer in the French army. The 1904 ref is a puzzlement.
Post a Comment