Dolphin Bothering on Agonda Beach, India – The Smug Monday Series, Ep. 10

This Monday we got up at 6:30 to go dolphin watching. We left our beach hut and with the help of the skipper and his mate, pushed the boat down oily chocks into the bumpy bay.  The 7 metre long boat was wooden, blue and white, with a starboard outrigger and a 9.9 horsepower engine. We saw several pods of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins bobbing over the waves.  After watching the dolphins for 20 to 30 minuets, we motored round to overgrown butterfly beach.  On the way we saw a rock that looks like a dog’s head and some that (if seen from a certain angle) looked like a tortoise.  It’s called butterfly beach because the locals thought the jungle on either side of the beach looked like butterfly wings.  Then we headed round to honeymoon beach were me and Evan got into the water and played on the outrigger.  The water felt almost icy cold when we got in, but when we got out it was a lot warmer.  The skipper hoiked us out of the water and we chugged off back to Agonda beach.  Like a rhino charging, we rammed into the beach and had a 2 kilometre stroll back to the hut.

The next day, we went on a fishing trip.  We were up at 6:00 to motor out into the next bay, with the same boat, skipper and his mate that we went dolphin watching with. At the first fishing site we cast our lines out into the choppy waves and caught nothing but rocks until the skippers mate got a black snapper!  After that we visited three more spots and caught a wrasse, another snapper, a blenny thing, two eels, a crab, some more rocks and the anchor line and then motored back to Agonda.  As we left, the skipper gave us all the fish, except the eels and the blenny thing and some bait shrimp to give to a restaurant to cook for dinner.  We had them cooked in a yummy tandoori sauce with some chips.  They still had their heads on so they looked like burned out zombie fish from hell.

It’s a dog’s head. Really.

Our catch. Well, when I say “our”….