The Best Thing I Ate In: Brazil

 

Piranha! 

Yes, that is a piranha hiding under all those hard-boiled eggs and lime wedges. 

You'll like this story; I don't think I've told it yet. So this one time, smack dab in the middle of the Amazon river, a group of us were chilling out on river boats by day and sleeping in hammocks by night. We had this guide, Marcos, who had been told that part of his job was to take us piranha fishing. So the group of us moved from the river boats into little canoes and set out sailing down the Amazon into the areas where the piranhas like to hang out. We were handed long bamboo sticks with fishing line and raw meat tied at the end. I must say, it took great coordination with so many of us in this little boat to not smack each other with the bamboo sticks.

There is a certain technique to piranha fishing. You have to splash the end of the bamboo into the water really fast a few times to get the piranha's attention, and then let it sit for a minute and let the meat sink. There we all were, splashing the water with bamboo sticks, and it starts pouring. Remember, we are in the Amazon; it doesn't just rain, it pours. So we are all sitting there, soaking wet, desperately waiting for a bite when one of us starts yelling all excitedly that they caught something. They pull in their bamboo stick and there is a little fish hopping about at the end. I don't remember what it was but it wasn't a piranha. There are a couple more false alarms and we are all soaked and discouraged and wondering why in the world we are out in the middle of the Amazon in the pouring rain, trying to catch piranhas with bamboo sticks. And then it happens. I feel a tug and give the stick a yank and up comes a piranha bigger than I've ever seen (I always thought they were little things). Marcos somehow manages to pull the hook out of its razor-sharp jaw and puts it in the bow of the boat where it flops about violently for the entire ride back to the riverboats. 

We had a couple family members of our tour guides with us back on the riverboats who graciously cooked us home-made meals three times a day. For dinner that night, we feasted on my piranha. It was unlike any fish I've every had before. There really was not much flesh at all, but the flavor was unbelievable. And that is the story of how I ate piranha in the Amazon.