I received a rare invitation from local friends to return there and live for a week and fish alongside the men for lobster and barracuda. How I wish I could have gone.
I would have been stringing up my hammock on my pal Nestor's creaky porch and getting schooled on how to filet fish at neck-breaking speed whilst feeding their guts to the crocodile under the hut on stilts.
Nestor is the old man whom portrays the grandfather in Alamar: He is real! ...And he is just like in the film (which says something simultaneously about both his acting skills and his superior fishing techniques)
Then Hurricane Ernesto happened.
We took all necessary precaution in Xcalak and got off mildly (compared to others) but the fishermen's huts in Chinchorro were completely eradicated. All that remained were the poles that their shacks sat upon in the lagoon, a devastating blow.
In the end I did not get to take Nestor and the captains up on their kind offer and will never know what it is like to live under such extreme conditions in the open seas. Instead I will have to watch 'Alamar' again and again, I highly recommend it!
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