Writing my travel journals is always a pleasure for me. It is a chance to revisit my trip and it’s an easy writing exercise. That is, it was easy until Campeche. The conundrum lies in the separation of two unique experiences rolled into one, and trying to decide which was my favorite. The fishing is an awesome adventure that cannot be mimicked or compared to anywhere else in the world, and the city is a cultural and refreshing experience that is quaint, modern, and yet old beyond belief. It is a place where the Mayan took up residence, then the Spanish, and now the Mexican. Throughout all these civilizations the constant has been the presence of the Silver King, the Tarpon.

Arriving late at night into Campeche, with a 6:00 a.m. wake up call means the first thing I experience outside my hotel room on this trip is a quick ride along the mangrove shoreline of the surrounding jungle as the sun begins to rise. The last silhouette of a structure I see as we clear the edge of the city is the baseball stadium which faces the water. We cruise over the glassy gulf of Mexico smoothly and efficiently. When the boat stops there is not a breath of wind, the water is gin clear, and the sounds of birds calling permeates the air. Within minutes I watch as two groups of Baby Tarpon roll on either side of the boat. The guides are dead quite and very calm as they turn the boat to a perfect casting angle. I am fishing a Big Eye Tarpon Fly in bright yellow and I can follow it under water as I strip the line. The fish that I am casting to don’t take the fly, but as the Big Eyed offering comes by a submerged log, a quick silver flash triggers my mind into telling my muscles to lay into the rod. Then the calm of the jungle explodes into water flying, guides speaking rapidly to one another in Spanish, undoubtedly instructions to take the boat away from the shoreline, and the continuous thud of this 25 pound Tarpon crashing into the water with mad thrashing leaps. We boat this fish after ten minutes and then carefully release it. We then motor 5 more minutes to a river mouth where more Tarpon are rolling. My friend then steps up to the plate, launches the fly and minutes later lands the first Tarpon of his life.

The scene is repeated virtually all day, with intermittent forays up into jungle rivers where battling these fish surrounded by structure tests everything you know about fighting fish. Several times a day we come across flats where we target Tarpon like Bonefish as they cruise slowly from place to place, other times we find them lying still in potholes on the Turtle grass and cast poppers over their heads to watch the vicious strikes. We catch Tarpon all week from 10 pounds to 30 pounds, and we have very little down time. These fish are year around residents here and they love to eat flies.

When the fishing day ends, a general call goes out in Spanish on the guides radio, and suddenly three or four boats begin to gather at full speed catching one another for a late afternoon rendezvous at the heart of the city. We arrive back at the hotel with instructions to be in the lobby at 6:00 p.m. A few cold drinks next to the pool is a welcome respite from the heat of the Tarpon grounds. A cigar also becomes a daily ritual as we discover Cuban Cohibas available at a few shops in the city. Eventually the afternoon rain comes for its ten minute show and we wash the chlorine from the pool off ourselves in the cool down pour. This shower is followed by a hot shower and some fresh clothes and then it’s off to dinner. Three dollars and fifty cents will get you a cab anywhere in the city, we visit a new restaurant each night and dine on the fruits of the gulf waters cooked in traditional Mexican and Mayan style. The freshest fish, platters of fajitas, rice and beans, freshly made tortillas all complimented with rich Mexican beer and fine tequila.

By the end of dinner the sun has set and the City begins to awaken in a dignified manner. It is not a city of crazy nightlife and tourists, but a city that functions best when the heat of the day has gone. Shops open their doors in the evening when they are ready, they close with each rain squall, and reopen just as soon as the rain has passed. The cobbled streets are alive with the residents doing their daily business. The city was once entirely contained inside a Spanish Fort and the remaining walls are lit up at night. Most of the buildings are restored to the original Spanish architecture and are painted in bright inviting colors. A few European tourists are about, and fewer Americans. Each night we find ourselves taking up residence at a local Cuban restaurant, where we sit on the veranda over the central square and watch the city go by. Eventually we wander about the shops until tired eyes lead us back to the hotel.

Sleep is deep and rejuvenating, even the excitement of the coming morning cannot keep me from the deepest slumber. In the morning, the air smells fresh and clean, a breeze created by the fast moving boat awakens me and is a perfect compliment to my coffee. By the time we enter the Tarpon grounds I am alert and ready for the challenge of the coming day.

By the middle of the week, we find time to put the fly rod down and explore the area. We visit the Endza Mayan pyramids one morning. We are the first and only tourists around as we stroll quietly through the plazas, trying to find angles where we can photograph the enormous pyramids, temples and halls. It is nearly impossible to find an angle as everything is enormous, the entire experience is surreal and leaves us speechless. We spend the rest of the day touring the Spanish Forts on local hilltops, designed to cannonball the pirates as they tried to row ashore. The rooms of the forts have been converted to Mayan Museums, where arrow heads the size of a hand and jaguar masks made of jade make the imagination run wild.

Campeche requires the use of all ones senses, touching the Tarpon, hearing the birds in the jungle, seeing the cathedral spires alit, tasting the fresh grilled fish, smelling the gulf air in the morning, I could make an endless list. In its current state Campeche is a gift to the fly angler. A full sensory experience that has left me longing to return and constantly wondering what I enjoy most about it…

I have been bonefish fishing a lot the last few years, but not on Andros. I long to get back to her shores and fish there again. I still see myself there standing on a flats boat somewhere along the fabled west coast of the Island. White sands and green mangroves abound, and the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds intoxicate the senses with primary colors. Before long, more subtle colors begin to emerge. The reds and blacks of the mangrove stems, the many shades of turquoise and azure formed by various water depths, the grey of a very distant thunder storm, the pink of wading Flamingos and the yellow of the constantly patrolling lemon sharks. The colors will all reflect on the mirrored side of the bonefish, the reason for coming.

Back at the lodge, someone is opening the screened windows in my room, letting fresh ocean breezes wisp through all day. On the dock, Iyke, our chef, is haggling with a local fisherman for a rather large grouper that will be our dinner tonight. He has already secured fresh conch for hot fritters that await when all the anglers return from fishing. Liz Bain, the lodge manager checks the clock, she will be waiting for each anglers return, standing on the dock as if the boys out on the range have been gone to long, when you see her from the boat standing there you just know this person is overly concerned with your well being and good time.

A young Bahamian guide, perhaps named Captain Al or Captain Leslie, with eyes like an osprey takes the push pole onto the platform and begins sneaking the skiff through the shallowest of water. When the bottom of the boat drags the mud I feel it, and also know that the bones will be cruising with their backs sticking up here. The bonefish know they are safe from sharks, and I know I am safe from being found by anyone for the next eight hours.

The tide is moving out in a hurry, and as the flats skiff nears the edge of the mangroves, the guide tells me to listen close. Sure enough, in the tide flooded mangroves one can hear hundreds, perhaps thousands of bonefish thrashing their way back to the open flats, back to the deeper water. If they don’t make it soon the tide will bottom them out, and the local osprey will surely find the beached fish. Almost all of them do make it out though. We station the boat at one of the creek mouths and cast at only the biggest bonefish as they file out of the mangroves and onto the flat one after the other. For the better part of two and a half hours the fly rod is bent and the drag is tested over and over.
My Bahamian captain doesn’t need to tell me when it’s time to go. I can see where the sun is, the tide is fully turned and the fish are gone. The only thing left is the hour run home. A high speed run through this frontier, another chance to take in all the colors, a chance to reflect on my day and my life.

I arrive back at the lodge right on time. One of my fishing friends is already at the dock. He offers me a hand from boat to dock, and with the other hand he offers me an ice cold Kalik, the Bahamian pilsner that cools the hottest island days. I can smell blackened grouper cooking somewhere on the lodge grounds. I take my weary body, clothes, beer and all, into an ice cold shower where I spend the next ten minutes sipping Kalik, shaking the heat and rejuvenating for a big night of story swapping, fine dinning, and constant laughter.

Mangrove Cay has become the bonefish Nirvana of my minds eye. A place I feel I’m coming home to, more than visiting. Liz, Al, Iyke, my friends the bonefish, everything is perfectly in it’s place on this corner of Andros Island, once you’ve been there you will never be the same, for the want of going back.

Yucatan Peninsula – My eyes are telling my brain that a fifteen pound Baby Tarpon just ate a Monarch Butterfly off of the water’s surface in the backcountry of Ascension Bay, in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. In the same instance my brain is telling the muscles in my arm to deliver my fly two feet left of the butterfly. The fly lands softly and sinks, the Tarpon gulps the butterfly and submerges. He sees my offering immediately. Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t have taken my fly away from him once he saw it. He grabs the fly, I set the hook, and he goes airborne instantly shaking every muscle. His elongated body is a massive pliable mirror reflecting everything into a blur of wild silver flashes.

Within an hour I am catching two pound bonefish, one after the next. The guide looks at me after the forth one and tells me this is a Baby Tarpon flat, and that he’d never seen a bonefish in this spot. “How long have you fished this spot” I ask. “Diez y ocho anos.” Eighteen years. There are no answers to the many mysteries of flats fishing. Each two pound bonefish becomes more precious than the next.

Why not look for Permit on the way back to the lodge? Which is exactly what we do. I see a twenty and a twenty five pounder swim head to tail across the bow of the boat. I take my best shot into the wind. It is not enough. I smile, shrug my shoulders and reel up, it is time for a Margarita. This was only the first day and I saw and cast at the super slam.

My Margarita is accompanied by a fresh ocean breeze. I get just the right amount of sand in my toes and sit back and listen intently to the waves breaking. Two Margaritas later this meditation is finally interrupted as other anglers return and crazy stories of the days events begin to fly. An “almost” Tarpon here, a landed Permit there, an iguana in the boat competes with stories of fishing in Mayan canals and dodging a rain squall only to find a school of forty five Permit. All I can think is “what will tomorrow bring, what about the rest of the week!?”

This is Ascension Bay, home to variety, mystery, and a pristine environment. To explore the bay is an immersion into an enduring environment tamed only by the Mayan culture. Since then only a few fishing lodges and locals have called these waters home. The fish that swim the bay now are the descendents of the fish that time and evolution put here eons ago.

Beyond the fishing my week is full of wonderful sights. Besides a plethora of Iguanas I see Fox, three kinds of Turkey, Crocodiles, Deer, Boa Constrictors, Guinea Fowl, and more. At night we walk the beaches by the light of the moon looking for Sea Turtles laying eggs on the beach. During the day it’s back to exploring flats, mangrove rivers, and skinny water bays. Fishing with Mexican guides I soon learn the essential Spanish; “Macabi, Sabalo, Robalo, y Permita”. Bonefish, Tarpon, Snook, and Permit. “Cerca” is near, “lejos” is far. The language reminds me of my immersion in this foreign land, and keeps me comfortable in the knowledge that my guide lives here and works annually over these waters. The guides are also the protectors of these waters and the surrounding jungle.

Mayan ruins stand sentry over Ascension Bay and I am reminded constantly of the past here. The waters and jungle remain in the form the Mayan culture used, and their historic, if not tragic and mysterious past is ever present in one’s journey here. Ascension Bay seems to be in very good hands presently. The United Nations contributes to the Sian Kan Biosphere which is nearly two million acres encompassing the bay. The locals understand a lively hood here comes from the life here and they watch over their resource. An angler can leave Ascension Bay and feel very, very comfortable in the fact that it will be here in it’s natural state for them to fish again and again, and for their grandchildren to fish when they have grandchildren of their own. Ascension Bay is a testament to a fishery gone right and has a future that looks as blue as the sky and water in and over the bay.