PIGTALES & A LOBSTER

When I first came to Indonesia I thought I might get a chance to catch a pig...now I don't want to (although I have thought about killing the neighbors pigs because they wake me up in the morning). During the last two weeks in the village of Hiliotalua I have eaten enough pig for two lifetimes.

In Nias the pig is the livestock of choice: they slaughter pigs for parties, they trade pigs for dowry's at weddings, and they raise pigs to make money. In fact at the local restaurant in the village, although there are chickens running around everywhere, you cannot order chicken; only pig. This is because chickens are bred for cockfighting, and they gamble money on the winner, so why would you eat something that makes an income for you?

The pig itself is only served in a soup bowl, and it has chopped up pieces of everything in it (kind of like a hotdog but not ground up)! You have a choice of eating just the pigfat, the skin, the liver, the intestines, or ocasionally a real piece of meat...I have had to do some heavy duty picking at the soup just to get fed. So much for bacon... The pictures were taken when I was living in Aceh, wild porkers that fed near our house and scared the dickens out of us while walking home at night.

In other news, I finally caught a sizable lobster last weekend while snorkeling! I actually found a lobster hotspot, there were more where this one came from, but I ran out of time to get them. It was quite good with garlic butter...mmmmmmm lobster.

BIG & TASTY

Easter weekend was a great time for the Medair staff to chill out and bond. We spend our time on Pulau Asu, and it was one of the best islands I have ever been to. It had amazing clear water, good cheap food, and hardly any people or crazy tourists! There was a small church on the island and it seemed like everyone showed up on Sunday; what a cool witness. Carmen and I went snorkeling every day, and I went spear fishing in the cool deep water.

There were plenty of reef fish around to catch, but I've found that these are getting too easy and there isn't much meat on them. I was looking for the big ones: Tuna, Grouper, snapper, or maybe a barracuda. You see these kind of fish once in a while, but they are usually taking off very fast in the other direction, or are too deep to go after. I guess they don't get big for being stupid...when they see something that looks like trouble they get the heck out of there! After swimming along the shore for an hour or so, Carmen and I decided to head back to the bungalow and then it happened...

I happened to glance along the coral bottom and I noticed a pattern that was inconsistent with the rest of the bottom about 6 meters down. I went down for a closer look and realized that it was a huge fish trying to camouflage itself with the bottom! I came back to the surface and told Carmen that I was about to spear a huge fish (yeah I'm kind of cocky sometimes), and then I dove for the bottom. As I approached the fish I noticed that it was laying flat on its side, and I wondered to myself if it was dead...but then its eye moved to meet me and I knew it was now or never. I released the spear and nailed him right above his eye, a perfect shot, I didn't wreck any of the meat on him! The fish fought me all the way to the surface and I felt like I should get the fish out of the water right away since it was bleeding quite a bit (I'm not a fan of having a lot of blood in the water when I don't know what kind of sharks are around)! We swam towards the rocks and then a wave pushed us up faster than we wanted to go...we got banged up a little, but managed to get out of the water without too much problems.

That night we had a grouper BBQ. We managed to find a Weber charcoal BBQ on the island, and Carmen prepared the fish with lime, black pepper, and garlic...man was it good. It fed the five of us, and I managed to climb a palm tree and get a few green coconuts to drink to boot; it was a perfect day!

For those of you who are not aware Pulau Asu is a popular surf destination in Indonesia. Tim Sorensen eat your heart out! By the way Tim, I'm working with a guy named Joe Miskov, you knew him from Honduras when you were on Roatan!