Give A Girl A Fish...

A few times, Joel and I went fishing off the pier at Máncora. Most times were fruitless attempts though once in a while we caught a couple of small catfish. I had left my handline behind in Huanchaco so we bought another from a small ferretería. After breakfast, we would ask for chicken or fish guts from someone at the mercado before making our way to the pier.

On our last day, we got snagged real good and all attempts failed miserably to release our tackle. But a fellow fisherman helped us out by cutting our line and donating a bit of lead and a hook. Our bait was chicken which Joel theorized would be better than fish since he reckoned the fish would want something different to eating other fish all the time.

As we waited for the smallest nibble to keep our hopes up, we watched the fishermen haul in scores of buckets full of fish by hand and rope from a dinghy to the waiting trolley on the pier. The sea birds hovered close, waiting for the odd fish to slip from the bucket. I noticed one that had slipped to the floor of the pier and was half squashed from a trolley wheel. Joel went over and asked if we could have it, and then we had fish bait.

Meanwhile, I caught a catfish with chicken gut, and as Joel rebaited our hook, a few seconds of inattention lost our fish bait to a lightning quick sea bird. But Joel managed to catch a fish as well, and we thought if we had one more, we could make ourselves some cebiche. A fisherman came over to borrow our knife and have a chat about cebiche, but before he left, he donated us a good sized fish.

That afternoon, we decided to fry the fish for lunch instead, neither of us having the knowledge of filleting fish for cebiche. Without a kitchen to do any cooking, we sought out La Señora who agreed to fry it all for us for just s/.2 and even threw in some onions, tomatoes and yuca. With a bit of bread and a bottle of softdrink, we enjoyed a huge, delicious meal for the cost of less than s/.4 each.