by Robson Green
‘Look!’ I point, ‘There’s about fifty!’
They are on both sides of the boat, and in fact there are hundreds – possibly thousands. Jesse tells me it’s a super-pod of Costa Rican spinner dolphins feeding on a shoal of sardines. Known for their gymnastic displays, the dolphins are leaping out of the water as if for joy. It’s an awesome sight, and, for fishermen, often a good omen. The dolphins by the boat look as if they are jumping steeples in a National Hunt race. It’s exhilarating to watch. As a boy I once asked Uncle Matheson, ‘Why do salmon leap?’ and he answered, ‘If you could, wouldn’t you?’
Jesse says that dolphins like to put on a show, but there’s a more serious side. Under the water it’s a feeding frenzy: there are dolphins, marlin, tuna, sharks and sailfish all wanting fresh sardines for lunch, washed down with a decent splash of claret. It’s a ferocious battle and an orgy of food, a bit like a Mr Wu’s all-you-can-eat buffet. On the surface of the water the cormorants and gannets scoop up the scraps. Gannets are not the brightest of birds and they gorge on food, trying to satiate their gargantuan appetites, until they literally can’t take off. From the boat I watch them lying on the water, bellies sticking up in the air, like fat tourists on the beach in Magaluf. This is when they are most vulnerable to attacks from sharks, which, after gorging on fish, have a sudden urge for chicken. We’ve all been there.
‘Robson!’
A reel at the side of the boat starts whizzing. Oh, my God, this is it: I’m about to join the fray. I reel like billy-o and am impressed with my strength and resolve. I keep my lines as tight as possible and I am winning. I am winning! The fish comes into sight; it’s a tuna – a beautiful yellowfin tuna. Both crews (TV and boat) look disappointed, but I am wild with excitement. I leap into the air like a dolphin. I am heeding the truth within, just as Stanislavski said. I heave the fish closer to the boat. It’s about twenty pounds – my biggest marine fish, save the marlin, but this time I’m landing it.
Steve Starbuck is unimpressed: ‘It’s a bit small.’
‘Small? It’s one of the biggest bloody fish I’ve ever caught!’ We heave her onto the boat. Her Latin name is Thunnus albacares, albacares meaning ‘white meat’. This powerful torpedo-shaped creature is capable of bursts of speeds over 40 m.p.h. I think, as with many creatures we harvest, that we take tuna for granted because it comes in tins and has become a staple food in our diet. But I believe we should revere and honour this truly magnificent creature. Sadly, like her cousin the bluefin, she is increasingly becoming overfished due to the ‘purse-seining’ methods of many commercial vessels. They use sophisticated technology to locate entire shoals and scoop them up in one net that can hold as much as 2,000 tonnes of fish. Unfortunately they tend to scoop up turtles and dolphins, too, which is why, where possible, you should always opt for dolphin-friendly or line-caught tuna.
But today we aren’t going desecrate this beautiful tuna with cheap oil, brine or vegetable broth, which they use to preserve tinned tuna in the States; we’re going to sushi it! It’s an amazing feeling eating tuna a couple of minutes after dispatching the fish. It gives your taste buds a unique flavour that can only be described as clean. And you don’t describe fish as clean-tasting very often, do you? The tuna is healthy, fresh and bloody good for you, and today I’m eating it at the finest restaurant in the Pacific: Jesse’s boat. In Costa Rica they have a saying, ‘La Pura Vida’, which strictly means ‘pure life’ but translates loosely as ‘It doesn’t get any better than this’ – and now I know what they mean . . .
Room 25, Santa Cruz
The hotel doesn’t look that bad from the outside, but the ordinary exterior hides the horror that lies within. I mean, I’ve heard of hotels with cockroaches, I’ve even complained about mosquitoes in a hotel, but I’ve never come across a hotel that has a problem with crabs. Not one or two but thousands of the buggers.
At the beginning of the rainy season the tajalines, or land crabs, come up from their underground homes in droves and travel to the coast to lay their eggs. And they don’t let anything get in their way – not even six-storey hotels. I try to sweep them out of my room but they are everywhere: in my bed, my bathroom, my drawers (honest!) and my shower. I banish most to the verandah and try to get some kip but all I can hear is them scratching with their tiny little claws at the door: ‘Let me in. Let me in.’ An army of Cathys at the French windows: ‘It’s me . . . I’ve come home. I’m so cold, let me in at your window . . .’
I put a pillow over my head to muffle Kate Bush and that’s when I come cheek to cheek with cold exoskeleton. I scream and the night turns murderous as I embark upon a killing spree. I stove the crabs’ heads in with my trusty priest – not a local Catholic Father, but the wooden tool I use for knocking fish on the head. And now crustacea, too. Die!!!
I return to bed, fruits de mer splattered across the room, put my empty wash bag over ‘me night fishing tackle’ and try to get some shut-eye. In the morning I close the door on room 25 and leg it from the scene of the crime. It’s a room I won’t forget in a hurry.
*
Director Ross Harper asks me to do a PTC about my crab hell. As I explain why there are so many of them, I pick one up for a more visual effect. Yes, it’s definitely more visual: the blighter nips my little finger, and as I pull my hand away its arm comes off. Oops. There’s an inhalation of breath from the crew and a squeal from me as I realise its nipper is still pinching my finger. The cameraman pulls the detached arm off. I tell viewers it will grow back, and indeed it will. I mention nothing of the crab pâté in room 25.
Upala
As you can imagine, after the night I’d experienced, I am feeling pretty rotten. Plus there was no hot water either, so morale is low. We get in the minibus around 4 a.m. and travel several hours by road to meet a man called Alex Arias, the president of El Club Nacional de Pesca de Costa Rica. The club is a big deal and I need to impress the main man. However, I am not impressed by what Alex proposes I do. He wants me to float down the hot, muddy, crocodile-infested Río Pizote – without a boat. And, what’s more, while being swept down the river in only my shorts and a life-jacket, I have to fish for the toothy first cousin of the piranha, the machaca. This is madness. I need to speak to my agent – except I haven’t got one.
I turn accusingly to the director and ask why he hasn’t let me in on this secret before now. Ross says, ‘Because otherwise you’d never have agreed to it.’ Fair enough. He’s right – but angry emails are going to be written later.
The thought of having a limb removed by a reptile, or my nadgers munched off by a machaca, doesn’t half focus the mind. Alex, a dark and handsome smooth-talking bar steward, smiles and says, ‘Don’t worry, Robson, it’ll be fine – but if you see a sign saying “Welcome to Nicaragua”, then you’ve gone too far.’
‘Great,’ I say, grinning, beginning to draft my incandescent email to Hamish.
‘But seriously,’ says Alex, ‘if you get to the border you need to turn around and swim upstream very fast – the guards are bored so they might “shoot you up”. Understand? Apart from that, this method of fishing is perfectly safe.’
I look down at the river from the bridge. It’s in full flood and swimming upstream would be impossible. A river like this in the UK would be declared unfishable – and besides, it’s swimming-pool temperature, so I imagine the fish are half-cooked already. Alex says, ‘Shall we jump off the bridge, Robson?’
‘No, Alex, let’s not. Let’s leave that to Daniel Craig.’
We are using spinning rods with little lures to attract the machaca, which takes me back to when I was a lad messing about on the River Coquet in Northumberland with Matheson. When I was about twelve or thirteen, we would spin for trout using Mepps that spun through the water like shiny two-pence pieces. A fly-fishing purist like my uncle wasn’t really keen on spinning but it was a guaranteed way of catching a fish or several – either that or using worms – and then you were definitely going to go home with something to co
ok for supper. Fish tend to swallow worms so using lures reduces the risk of damaging the fish, as the hook will usually catch the side of the mouth. This is the best method for catching and releasing a fish, whether you need to do so because of quota, size or because it’s a female carrying eggs.
Alex and I put on our life jackets and wade into crocodile alley with our rods. The water soon sweeps us away. Surprisingly the machaca, considering they are members of the violent-crime piranha family who specialise in ‘waste management’, are vegetarian, save the occasional insect. They love to gorge on the wild figs of the Ficus tonduzii, known locally as the Chilamate tree, which grows along the riverbanks, its branches overhanging the water. As well as figs, the fish also eat various flowers, palm fruits and wild plums. I’ve never heard of a fish like it. Rumour has it they also love a cup of lemon and ginger tea after a hard day at yoga and are rather partial to tie-dyed T-shirts.
We cast our lines out as we travel downstream, trotting a piece of bait along the riverbed. It’s similar to the ‘drop minnow’ method I use to catch trout on the Coquet, which is, as we say up north, ‘deadly’, basically because the bait is carried by the fast water into the mouths of the trout waiting in ambush. Thankfully, back home, we do it from the relative comfort of the riverbank, not in the drink.
Alex gets a bite but struggles to reel it in because we’re in such deep water. It’s a machaca but it quickly flies off the hook. We retreat to the bank and watch as fruit drops off a tree into the water and a hungry machaca snaps it up. Bam! It takes it and is gone. I’m not only really keen to win one of these fighting fish for dinner but I’m also hell-bent on joining Alex’s club.
We walk up the riverbank and find a spot to wade in and see if we have better luck fishing on our feet. It’s late morning and as I stare at the water I have a flashback to the tajalines crab massacre in room 25. I imagine the chambermaid’s scream. My rod is yanked forward: I’ve got a bite. I set the rod up and let it run. Then, very slowly, I reel in the fish, which is fighting like a featherweight champion. I get it to the bank and pick it up. It’s tiny, no more than a pound, but I turn to camera and proudly say, ‘Look: my first ever cuchaka.’
‘Machaca,’ interjects Alex.
‘Fuck! Machaca.’
‘Machaca,’ he repeats.
‘Machaca,’ I say, reddening with embarrassment. I pop the fish back in the water and he swims off. According to club rules any fish under a pound has to be put back in the river. The club is like the British fishing bodies, there to safeguard the health of the river and the fish, as well as to promote the sport. Alex also hooks one and it’s a good size, so we’re keeping it for our dinner. I carefully hold the vicious fish while delivering a piece to camera.
‘Look at that: beautiful Costa Rican machaca – and what’s great is, I can’t believe how many fish are here. What it tells us all is that this is a very, very healthy river. This fella is for dinner. Well done, matey,’ I say to Alex. ‘Whoa!’
Suddenly the fish makes a bid for freedom, plops into the river and is gone. I am mortified.
‘I’ve just lost your fish – oh, fuck! Oh, shit, I’ve just lost the fish!’
Alex looks at me like I’m a right member – but definitely not of his exclusive fishing club. I apologise profusely.
‘It’s OK, buddy,’ he says.
‘I’d be knocking me out if I were you.’
‘Next time!’ he laughs. ‘You’re paying for lunch anyway!’
‘Because I’ve lost the fucking fish!’
Off camera it was even worse. I also managed to stand on Alex’s best and most cherished rod just after I lost the ‘cuchaka’. So stunned was I at dropping the fish that I stumbled backwards like a startled wildebeest and laid waste to his rod as if it were no more than a twig. I’ll never forget the look on his face or my own toe-curling anguish. However, in spite of the mishaps, Alex still made me an honorary member of his prestigious fishing club. Dunno when I’ll use it, mind!
Maleku Tribe
The next day we take a five-hour drive north, deep into rainforest. We are heading for the village of Impala to meet one of the last indigenous tribes of the region, the Maleku. The Maleku people still speak their own language and are fiercely protective of their traditions. They’ve been living here for over 1,200 years, so if anyone knows about jungle river fishing it’s them. I greet Ulysses and two of his fellow Maleku tribesmen, 600 of whom still live on the reserve.
‘Capi, capi,’ they say, tapping me on the shoulder twice. I return their welcome: ‘Capi, capi.’
Ulysses tells me I won’t be fishing today as they are taking me on an armadillo hunt.
‘OK,’ I say, looking at Ross.
He shrugs and we decide to go with the flow. Well, the extreme part of it fits in with the show, at least! As we hack our way through the rainforest I am reminded of Tony Last in Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, who disappears in a South American rainforest and is held captive by a man who forces him to read the entire works of Charles Dickens. I wonder what would be the modern equivalent of such literary torture? Perhaps the complete works of Jilly Cooper, Jeffrey Archer or even Katie Price.
My heart misses a beat when Ulysses’ machete swings dangerously close to my knee as we slowly but surely pick our way through the thick undergrowth. The rainforest is the Maleku tribe’s supermarket, building supplier and pharmacy. After an hour we stop for a breather near an unremarkable-looking bush. The Maleku medicine man, a dead ringer for Frank Zappa, cuts a leaf off and motions that he wants me to try it. I look around at the director and assistant. They’re both nodding, saying, ‘Try it, Robson.’ Why don’t they bloody try it? I think to myself.
I put the leaf in my mouth and chew. It’s vile and bitter. I spit it out. Suddenly I can’t feel my tongue or throat – my whole mouth is numb! I try to speak but I sound like I’ve had a smack in the mouth, a root canal and then another smack in the mouth. I start choking to bring my throat back to life. Frank Zappa tells me the sensation will subside and I’ll be back to normal in half an hour. Great. Meantime I’m thuppothed to prethent a thhow. He goes on to tell me the tribe uses the leaf for numbing the mouth in order to extract teeth. In fact, many of the pills and potions we have in the West are synthesised from these natural rainforest plants. It’s fascinating. I chew gum manically to get some kind of feeling back, and slowly it starts to return. I realise I wouldn’t last five minutes on my own in the rainforest.
After three or four hours of trudging through the unbearably humid rainforest, the Maleku locate an armadillo burrow and start digging the creature out. It takes a very long time and I come to the conclusion that they must really like armadillo. One of the tribesmen disappears down the hole, three others holding him by the ankles; he fumbles about and then shouts something back. He is hauled up, victorious – clutching an armadillo. I tell them they really should invest in a Jack Russell.
Instructed by the tribesmen, I knock the strange-looking creature on the head and return to camp with our supper. It’s boiled up by the village ladies and served with soggy bananas. The Maleku believe eating armadillo is good if you have asthma and it is apparently also a rich source of iron. I wonder if it helps panic attacks. My new friends all watch me take a mouthful.
‘It tastes like pork,’ I say.
They lean in closer wanting to know my verdict. I tell them, ‘I prefer fish.’ They laugh.
Man, I am looking forward to a good night’s sleep. I’m dead on my feet but what an amazing day it’s been. I am shown my hut in the camp . . . and I immediately wish I could be back in room 25 with the crabs. It’s a bleeding mud hut with a crappy wooden door that doesn’t fit, and to top it off I’m sharing it with Ross Harper and George Hughes, the assistant producer.
As we settle down to sleep I imagine I’m in my bed at home in Surrey with Vanya. My son Taylor’s tucked up in his room, safe and sound, and I have clean sheets and Siberian goose-down pillows and . . . suddenly my dream is interrupte
d by a loud rumble. Half asleep, I come to and find both of the guys are now snoring heavily and I am stuck in between them, and the armadillo and bananas are having a very negative effect on the camp. I wake them up.
‘Ross, George, you both have to go. I can’t sleep with you. You snore like a bush pig and you have a bottom like Bhopal.’
They willingly rush off to nearby accommodation with running water and proper beds. I resist and I snuggle down as best I can on the hard floor. I’m not doing a Bear Grylls and skipping off to the nearest five-star, I think. I want an authentic experience.
What is it they say? Be careful what you wish for . . .
Thud! Something hits the roof. Thud! What on earth? I search outside with the flashlight. The hut is under a bloody mango tree. Thud! I look closer. A monkey is throwing the mangos on purpose! I go back into the hut. The monkey starts pelting the roof with mangos – it’s like throwing-out time on Saturday night in Newcastle. Eventually the monkey gets bored and decides to make loud calls instead. I do breathing exercises to relax my frazzled mind and slowly I start to drift off again . . . Zzz! – a mosquito flies past my ear. Zzz! Then a cockerel starts cock-a-bloody-doodle-doing every twenty seconds . . . and it’s only 1 a.m. Dogs are barking, ants and mosquitoes are biting me, birds are tweeting – all that’s missing is a bloody brass band. I am in the seventh circle of hell – get me back to room 25! I would rather read Martin Chuzzlewit surrounded by tajalines crabs for eternity than stand this for another night. I desperately need sleep.
Sadly, I get none. The next morning my face is creased and blotchy like a wanton hussy’s bed. I tell Ross I need to phone my son, Taylor, as it’s his eighth birthday. He tells me the only phone in the area is three miles up a mountain. I give him a Mel Gibson snarl and get jogging.
‘Tay? It’s Dad. Yes, it’s really me – come on, it hasn’t been that long! Happy birthday, little man. Are you all right? Me? I’m fine. Well, actually I’m not. [Cue tears] Daddy hasn’t slept for three days and I look terrible and that’s every actor’s nightmare and they gave me this leaf to chew which made my mouth go numb and I’ve been attacked by monkeys, crabs and mosquitoes and . . . [sniff] I killed an armadillo . . .’