Tiny Tales
Post 14
From the seat of the cart, the signs along the bumpy old ocean road had made themselves known, but with the place being down some backstreet mid-island, there wasn’t a particularly high level of optimism about Buddha’s. Having discovered the Shipyard, a wonderful restaurant and bar right on the water, or The Sand Bar restaurant located on the adjacent island, coming down from this whole pink cloud wasn’t in the cards.
Not yet, anyway.
Fast forward to ten days later and Buddha’s had become a post-day staple. A place where someone like me could sneak away from the loud tourists and obnoxious conversations. Most tourists would take one look at this place and say “uhh, ya, no thanks”. That’s what I had fallen in love with on my first visit.
The caged parrot that did a whole lot of shit-talking, the entire outdoor bar vibe with patrons smoking at the bar counter on uncomfortable stools while subtle caribbean music played on an ancient surround-sound setup only heightened my affection for it, and when the day was done, and especially if I wasn’t entertaining guests back at Bonefish Camp, I was unwinding at Buddha’s.
See, fishing for bonefish requires a tonne of brainwork - mostly good stuff - and quite a bit of disappointment. They’re a fairly elusive fish that frighten easily, but that also give you all the indications of how to catch them if you are paying attention, but getting there can be a bumpy, exhausting road. Dealing with that all goddamn day long, for days on end, drains even the best anglers. I’m nowhere near being one of the best, so it just about destroys me.
Hence the need for Buddha’s Bar.
The whole place is unique in that not every fishing trip involves a place quiet like this. True, you could go looking for one, and more than likely you will find a place that fits the minimum requirements (decent food, cold beer…hell, maybe even some old country music), but there’s something special about being drawn into a hole in the wall that you held a certain level of skepticism over, then completely falling for it.
It’s best once the sun goes down, the wind buggers off, and the Anoles are replaced by pale, patchy geckos. The parrot calls it a night, roosting on a bar mid-cage, and the smell of cigars and cheap cigarettes wafts through the wall-less building. It’s the same bartenders every night, sassy and friendly. My options of pints include Sands, Kalik and Modelo. I could get a Sands Lite, but it’s not going to happen.
Eventually all the dollar bills from all over the world stuck to the ceiling and the tacky shit covering the sparse wall space becoming charming in a way that most other places fail to hit. Maybe it’s the palm trees outside, or maybe it’s the way that all the decor reminds me of the way that my grandparents decorated our family cottage thirty plus years earlier, but there’s something about the cheesy sayings on the wooden signs that feelings…I don’t know…inviting? Good enough.
The beer is okay, cold enough in the heat and does the trick. It’s hard not to glance around the place, as empty as it is sometimes, and be reminded that this is someone’s livelihood, their dream, their everything. Someone is going to come here and order the conch fritters and go “holy shit, these are incredible!” and when they get home from their big vacation down in the Caribbean, they’ll tell all their friends just how worldly they are after eating the giant snails in some Bahamian backwater.
That makes me smile because at one time, that was me.
Anyway, the fact of the matter is that this is the kind of place where I can park the little rented golf cart in front of, leave all my fishing gear in it, and when I come back out, it’ll all still be there. If it’s not, you can bet your ass that it was a tourist that took it, not a local. That’s something that I can no longer find back where I come from, and while we are all just visitors here, we tend to stay in places long enough to start to get a feeling of home. If I lived here, I’d never leave. I’d be poor, living out of a one bedroom apartment, maybe working on a lobster boat to fuel my fly fishing addiction, eating snapper and conch salad. I’d weigh less, swim more, and talk only when required to do so.
But I don’t, so I won’t, and that last Sand certainly tasted like another.