Paul Coles, Youthworkerish type guy. Present location: Targu Mures, Romania. Married to an amazing girl named Fiona. I'm on a JOURNEY and have no idea where I'll end up other than in the hands of God.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

I had an amazing time in the States and Canada (A.K.A. the promise land) last month, thanks in part to a very generous Livada Board member.

Here are some of the highlights...

Deep sea fishing with my mate Ian. This was an amazing first time experience. I caught a few good fish, including a couple sharks and got to spend the day with two brand new friends, Kenny and Mike.

This was me in the process of fighting a bull shark for 1 1/2 hours. I have never been so tired in my life. The fish was about 9 feet long and he snapped the line just as we got him to the side of the boat. We brought him in from 200 ft down and it seemed like a pointless battle for most of the hour and a half because I would would repeatedly reel in a few feet of line only for him to run out 20 or 30 feet. Very depressing and tiring but perseverance paid off in the end.

The other huge highlight (and I mean literally "HUGE") was getting to drive this amazing vehicle around 9000 acres of Florida swamp land for 2 days. I had never even dreamed that vehicles like this existed, let alone thought that I would drive one. My closest previous experience was watching Mad Max-Beyond Thunder Dome as a kid. But was it ever fun. No tree, ditch, swamp or river can stop these bad boys, but you need a full acre to turn it around. Amazing!

6 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Ahhh mate I'm so jealous of the fishing trip... one things does concern me however, have you seen the state of the clouds behind you in that photo? Looks like the perfect storm is about to blow...

5:52 PM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

5:52 PM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

5:52 PM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

yes those two deleted comments were mine... patience with blog has never been a strong point. oh and I'm refering to photo 2. ;-)

6:02 PM

 
Blogger Paul Coles said...

Yeah the perfect storm was brewing. We managed to dodge it all day but it hit us for about an hour when we were reeling in moby dick. We got fairly drenched and rocked!

10:09 PM

 
Blogger Jamie said...

That is class, kinda puts our Pike of the Year comp over here in N.Ireland down a few pegs :) I thought my 10 lb pike was amazin, you probably used a 10lb fish as bait! You can go fishing for Tope (Irish shark) on Carlingford lough, anyone interested?

11:31 AM

 

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