This French prison sucks. They do not have French Fries (pommes frites). They do not have absinthe. Why my friend would suggest a flight to French Guyana via Mexico City is now beyond my ability to figure. You can't get prescription medications without a prescription (and that prescription must be written in French!). There are no French hookers. The casinos consist of thatched roof huts where you gamble with goat bones and marbles. Their are lepers everywhere. These French Gauloises cigarettes almost make me puke.
But, as luck would have it, Martine Jao, my friend, danced a Bo-Jangles for the assembled throng and miraculously, we were released. We fled. One doesn't so much leave Guyana as flee from it with gazillion bird-sized mosquitos trailing into the open ocean. We joined up with an outfit that accepted our sandals as payment for the journey.
We lay upon a cargo of coconuts and undiluted cocaine, neither of which we were allowed to touch. We ate seafood which in this instance meant anything that floated past the boat and was already dead or dying. So mostly, we didn't eat at all. Our iPod batteries had long since crapped out, our cellphones had been confiscated to make long distance overseas calls. One dude, Igor Castallano, made a move for my spare Levi 501 jeans and I fractured his foot with a heavy brass gaffing hook.
At this point all hell broke loose on the boat and Martine and I took to the sea with what we could carry for open ocean survival. Our gear consisted of a ball peen hammer, two flares and an innertube as well as what we were wearing which at that time wasn't much. We floated for days, 12 at least, and learned how to desalinate water, catch yellow fin tuna and weave clothing from passing palm fronds. Over time, 3 or 4 days, we had built a small, sustainable seagoing innertube. Martine crafted a small gas grill, tapping the methane that bubbles up into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of all the exploratory drilling.
On day twelve, we used the first of the two flares to arouse the interest of the Cuban Coast Guard near the Isle of Pines. They couldn't have cared less, though they did stick around long enough to eat some fish tacos and left us some flour tortillas and mango salsa for lunches down the line. It didn't matter because at this point, our adventure had become a vacation and the word of our fish tacos had reached the mainland. Within the day, we were approached by a boat commissioned by the cable Food Network. And, so to speak, rescued from our ordeal.
Check your local cable listings for our show on open water, innertube-gas-grill fish tacos with Cuban Mango salsa.
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