The brave men of Ceará
Imagine a small fleet of boats resembling what we would call rafts, no more than three or four meters long, with cotton-fabric sails rigged on a mast consisting of a few bamboo sticks appearing from the darkness, approaching the shore like ghost boats. I was mesmerized. I joined the group of men waiting ashore and as the first jangada arrived to the beach I helped them in carrying it up on the dry sand. The boat was very simple. The fishermen who have been sailing on it for all that time were totally completely exhausted to say the least. There was not even a place to sit on that little craft and I imagined they travelled a pretty long time just to get back to the shore.
After the boats landed, the fishermen started to distribute the fish to the crowd in a kind of improvised fish market. In the crowd I also spotted the owner of the restaurant claiming some fish for his restaurant. The penny dropped that the whole delay with our dinner was due to the fact the he ran out of fresh fish and was waiting for the boats to come back with their catch.
