Fourteen teams that braved last Saturday’s bumpy sea conditions to compete in Reef Environmental Education Foundation’s fifth winter lionfish derby in the Upper Keys managed to whack an impressive …
The Dive God Visits Cuba
12 Apr 20166:37 PM
by Sue Cocking, Guy Harvey Outpost staff writer
scocking@guyharveyoutpost.com
In his 62 years of scuba diving, Neal Watson (a.k.a. the Dive God) has pretty much done it all: set world records for depth and distance; tangoed with huge sharks; travelled the world; and appeared underwater in numerous television shows and movies. But there WAS one place on the globe that Guy Harvey Outpost’s dive team leader had never taken the plunge: Cuba.
That is, until very recently.
Watson joined Guy Harvey Outpost Resorts president Mark Ellert; Guy Harvey Research Institute head Mahmood Shivji; and Scuba Radio founder Greg Holt on a four-day diving/fact-finding mission to the island nation under the ‘people-to-people’ program.
To say the Dive God was wowed by his visit would be a gross understatement.
“This place ROCKS!” Watson said. “This is the pinnacle. I have literally travelled around the world and you’d be hard-pressed to find any place as uniquely different from any other culture in the world as you find 45 minutes from South Florida. Unbelievable!”
Watson’s enchantment began almost as soon as he deplaned in Havana: downtown streets filled with vintage American cars.
“It was like being in the world’s biggest antique car show,” he said.
And things only got better from there.
Accompanied by their Cuban American guide, the group rented a 1957 Pontiac, overnighted at a family-run bed and breakfast; sampled hand-rolled cigars at a tobacco farm; enjoyed dancing and listening to acoustic salsa music at various Havana night spots; sampled the signature daiquiris at La Floridita– a favorite hangout of author Ernest Hemingway; and, oh yes, dived.
The group cruised west in the Pontiac for about six hours from Havana to a dive resort in the village of Maria La Gorda located on the western tip of the Pinar del Rio province. Watson was pleasantly surprised at the fleet of clean, modern dive boats; well-maintained rental and first-aid equipment and the capable, friendly and knowledgeable dive crew.
The group only had time for a one-tank dive — an 80-foot-deep guided drift along mountainous coral heads and scenic caverns in a marine park established in 1984. It reminded Watson of his underwater explorations of Andros and the Exuma Islands in the Bahamas.
“Amazing,” Watson said.
Shivji, a marine scientist who has logged hundreds of dives, also was impressed.
“The coral reefs are in really good shape compared to quite a few other places I’ve been diving,” Shivji said.
The Guy Harvey Outpost team enjoyed the whirlwind visit so much that it organized another cultural/scientific/diving expedition to Cuba in June in conjunction with the Reef Environmental Education Foundation. The trip sold out in one hour. Stay tuned for more about future Guy Harvey Outpost expeditions to the island.
*****************
Sue Cocking chronicles the Guy Harvey Outpost travel and adventure experience in regular blog posts on GuyHarveyOutpostNews.com/. For 21 years, Cocking covered the full spectrum of outdoors adventure opportunities in South Florida and beyond for the Miami Herald, including fishing, diving, hunting, paddling, camping, sailing and powerboat racing. She is a certified scuba diver and holder of an IGFA women’s world fly fishing record for a 29-pound permit.
**********
Share your photos, videos and experiences with Guy Harvey Outpost by hash tagging #OutpostAttitude to all of your social media posts.
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 has pretty much done it all: set world records for depth and distance; tangoed with huge sharks; travelled the world; and appeared underwater in numerous television shows and movies. But there WAS one place on the globe that Guy Harvey Outpost's dive team leader had never taken the plunge: Cuba.
That is, until very recently.
Watson joined Guy Harvey Outpost Resorts president Mark Ellert; Guy Harvey Research Institute head Mahmood Shivji; and Scuba Radio founder Greg Holt on a four-day diving/fact-finding mission to the island nation under the 'people-to-people' program.
To say the Dive God was wowed by his visit would be a gross understatement.
"This place ROCKS!" Watson said. "This is the pinnacle. I have literally travelled around the world and you'd be hard-pressed to find any place as uniquely different from any other culture in the world as you find 45 minutes from South Florida. Unbelievable!"
Watson's enchantment began almost as soon as he deplaned in Havana: downtown streets filled with vintage American cars.
"It was like being in the world's biggest antique car show," he said.
<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Cuba.mules_.jpg"><img class="alignnone wp-image-4014 size-full" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Cuba.mules_.jpg" alt="Cuba.mules" width="800" height="531" /></a>
And things only got better from there.
Accompanied by their Cuban American guide, the group rented a 1957 Pontiac, overnighted at a family-run bed and breakfast; sampled hand-rolled cigars at a tobacco farm; enjoyed dancing and listening to acoustic salsa music at various Havana night spots; sampled the signature daiquiris at La Floridita-- a favorite hangout of author Ernest Hemingway; and, oh yes, dived.
The group cruised west in the Pontiac for about six hours from Havana to a dive resort in the village of Maria La Gorda located on the western tip of the Pinar del Rio province. Watson was pleasantly surprised at the fleet of clean, modern dive boats; well-maintained rental and first-aid equipment and the capable, friendly and knowledgeable dive crew.
The group only had time for a one-tank dive -- an 80-foot-deep guided drift along mountainous coral heads and scenic caverns in a marine park established in 1984. It reminded Watson of his underwater explorations of Andros and the Exuma Islands in the Bahamas.
"Amazing," Watson said.
Shivji, a marine scientist who has logged hundreds of dives, also was impressed.
"The coral reefs are in really good shape compared to quite a few other places I've been diving," Shivji said.
The Guy Harvey Outpost team enjoyed the whirlwind visit so much that it organized another cultural/scientific/diving expedition to Cuba in June in conjunction with the Reef Environmental Education Foundation. The trip sold out in one hour. Stay tuned for more about future Guy Harvey Outpost expeditions to the island.
*****************
Sue Cocking chronicles the Guy Harvey Outpost travel and adventure experience in regular blog posts on GuyHarveyOutpostNews.com/. For 21 years, Cocking covered the full spectrum of outdoors adventure opportunities in South Florida and beyond for the Miami Herald, including fishing, diving, hunting, paddling, camping, sailing and powerboat racing. She is a certified scuba diver and holder of an IGFA women's world fly fishing record for a 29-pound permit.
**********
Share your photos, videos and experiences with Guy Harvey Outpost by hash tagging #OutpostAttitude to all of your social media posts. https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/the-dive-god-visits-cuba/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=A Paddle Trip Even Lewis & Clark Would Have Skipped&body=<img class=" size-medium wp-image-3016 alignleft" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/paddle.jpg?w=300" alt="paddle" width="300" height="267" />By Sue Cocking, Guy Harvey Outpost staff writer
Paddling the marshy interior of Everglades National Park makes you feel like you are the first one ever to explore the region. You won't see any humans other than your companions. You won't encounter much trash, save for a stray deflated Mylar balloon here and there. The only mechanical sounds you'll hear come from the occasional small airplane overhead. You come to truly appreciate the exquisite natural beauty of this vast 1.5-million-acre wilderness known as the "River of Grass". And you will really, really wish that it was more river and less grass--especially after 22 miles of slogging in a single day.
A group of about 20 men and women whose names will be withheld to protect the uncertain status of their mental health embarked on Halloween on what was supposed to be a day-long exploration of Taylor Slough extending from the park's Homestead entrance southwest to Nine Mile Pond near Flamingo. The trip was the brainchild of a veteran local Everglades explorer we'll call "Tom" who leads these out-of-the-way paddling adventures annually, dubbed "Invitationals". "Tom" never follows the trails on park brochures, instead mapping out his routes using Google Maps and GPS.
Setting out before dawn in canoes and kayaks from an airboat trail that used to be the Ingraham Highway pre-dating the park's 1947 establishment, the group pushed, pulled, poled and paddled for hours through thickets of spikerush, sawgrass and periphyton -- a spongy algae variously described as elephant snot or monkey puke. It actually smells pretty good, kind of like PineSol. But it is no fun to navigate, especially when your paddle blades catapult thick wads of it onto you and your boat. Unseasonably warm temperatures and very little breeze added to the discomfort.
The going was so slow through the shallow water and dense grass that the group hadn't covered even half the distance by the time we stopped for lunch in a small patch of shade beside a tree island.
While everyone was breaking out their water bottles and lunchboxes, one paddler suddenly flipped upside down in his kayak. At first, I thought he'd been startled by a snake or something. But when he didn't crawl out from under the kayak right away, several people nearby leapt from their boats, pulled him out of the water and righted his boat. He was conscious, but pale and dazed.
One of his rescuers, fortunately, was a physician who checked him out, pronounced a touch of heat exhaustion, and said he would be fine after taking in electrolyte fluids. But he was too run down to paddle much, so he took my spot in the bow of Tom's canoe and I took over the kayak.
I would like to say the trip became easier, but only in small increments. Water levels rose a bit higher as we neared Craighead's Pond-- site of a raised platform and defunct science experiment. But after a couple more miles, I was growing tired from the drag of the grass and the constant shipping of slimy algae into the kayak.
To no one's surprise, the sun set and the sky grew dark well before we entered the mangrove labyrinth of Nine Mile Pond. Nearly everyone had headlamps or flashlights and GPS units that tracked true, so there was little chance of getting lost. But of course, hordes of mosquitoes and gnats appeared as soon as the light faded, making an uncomfortable journey even worse. At least the air cooled off.
But with about five miles yet to go, I was pretty exhausted. At our next rest stop in the dark, I traded the kayak to a young woman triathlete in exchange for her seat in her uncle's canoe. Paddling in the bow with him in the stern felt like a spa day compared to mushing in the kayak.
With no further misadventures, the entire group somehow arrived safely at the Nine Mile Pond parking lot about 8:45 p.m.-- a distance of 22 miles in 13 1/2 hours.
As we made landfall, my canoe partner began whistling the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's "Messiah"-- wrong holiday, but an entirely appropriate anthem under the circumstances.
******************
Sue Cocking chronicles the Guy Harvey Outpost travel and adventure experience in regular blog posts on GuyHarveyOutpostNews.com/. For 21 years, Cocking covered the full spectrum of outdoors adventure opportunities in South Florida and beyond for the Miami Herald, including fishing, diving, hunting, paddling camping, sailing and powerboat racing. She is a certified scuba diver and holder of an IGFA women's world fly fishing record for a 29-pound permit.
**********
Share your photos, videos and experiences with Guy Harvey Outpost by hash tagging #OutpostAttitude to all of your social media posts. https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/a-paddle-trip-even-lewis-clark-would-have-skipped/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=Guy Harvey Outpost Hosting Herman Lucerne Memorial Kick-Off Party and Awards Dinner&body=<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/10345549_1090351407659179_1203005855189145553_n-2.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-2882 alignleft" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/10345549_1090351407659179_1203005855189145553_n-2.jpg?w=300" alt="10345549_1090351407659179_1203005855189145553_n (2)" width="300" height="284" /></a>From the early 1970s till the early 90s, Dr. Lloyd Wruble fished the remote waters of the Everglades back country twice weekly with a mentor who'd been roaming the region well before it became a national park in 1947. Herman Lucerne-- the former Florida City mayor and pioneer citrus grower nicknamed Mr. Everglades--introduced Wruble, a Miami oral surgeon, to the winding mangrove labyrinth of Hells Bay where the two endured extreme heat, relentless mosquitoes, and menacing reptiles for the exhilaration of catching monster snook.
"He showed me a lot I didn't know," Wruble said of Lucerne. "We were prepared to stay all night-- mosquito suits and all that."
Being unable to explore some of the park's narrowest inland passages in Lucerne's wide motorboat prompted Wruble to procure a 16-foot aluminum craft with a 70-horsepower Yamaha capable of penetrating creeks only as wide as stairwells and plying flats less than a foot deep. There they caught plenty of other game fish -- tarpon, bonefish, snapper, black and red drum, sea trout and even black bass where the 'Glades waters ran fresh enough. In the days before GPS and reliable cell phone service, the pair were the envy of South Florida sport anglers who longed to plumb their secret spots but were daunted by the perils and discomfort.
In 1992, Lucerne died in the aftermath of devastating Hurricane Andrew. But Wruble kept fishing on his own and eventually introduced up-and-comers such as captain Rick Murphy, now host of television's Chevy Florida Insider Fishing Report, to the hardships and rewards of Hells Bay and the Everglades.
In 2001, Wruble held the first Herman Lucerne Memorial Backcountry Fishing Championship to honor his friend's pioneering fishing legacy. The 2015 edition slated for Sept. 18-20 will host more than 70 angler teams competing to catch and release all seven eligible species --snook; tarpon; bonefish; sea trout; snapper; red drum; and either black drum or black bass--on bait, lures or fly tackle within Everglades National Park. No prize money will be awarded; proceeds benefit the park. The Islander, a Guy Harvey Outpost Resort in Islamorada, will host the Sept. 18 kick-off party and the Sept. 20 awards dinner.
Logging all seven species will be fun to try, but tough to accomplish.
"They have to time the tides and have to pre-plan where to go at what time," Wruble said. "Knock off the easy ones first and save time to go after the more difficult ones. Bonefish is usually the toughest. It's very difficult to do, but every year we have several anglers that get all seven species."
The angler who measures, photographs and releases the greatest total length of all seven will be crowned grand champion. Trophies will be awarded in numerous other categories as well. Co-hosting the event are fishing celebrities Flip Pallot, Chico Fernandez, C.A. Richardson and Rick Murphy. https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/guy-harvey-outpost-hosting-herman-lucerne-memorial-kick-off-party-and-awards-dinner/){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=Procuring Haute Cuisine by Airboat on Lake Okeechobee&body=<a href="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/p1010117.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-2987 alignleft" src="https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/p1010117.jpg?w=300" alt="P1010117" width="300" height="225" /></a>by Sue Cocking, Guy Harvey Outpost staff writer
scocking@guyharveyoutpost.com
Those delicately-flavored sautéed frog legs you pay $25 and up for in South Florida restaurants do not come from amphibian farms somewhere in the Far East. Unlike some fish sold in U.S. markets and eateries which is farmed overseas, this freshwater delicacy likely is harvested by moonlighting cowboys, construction workers and fishing guides riding around on airboats at night on Lake Okeechobee or the Everglades.
While most do it for the money--(they get between $7 and $8 per pound of dressed frog legs)--some do it for fun, dinner, and charters.
Captain Bobby Stafford of Okeechobee earns his living by guiding locals and out-of-towners on bass fishing, gator or duck hunting, and frog gigging expeditions on the Big O. Between bookings, he sometimes goes out to harvest enough frogs for dinner.
"It's a fun thing to do, plus you get to bring home good table fare," he said. "There's a challenge to it."
On a recent weekday night, Stafford and I embarked on his newly-refurbished,14-foot airboat at Okee-Tantie on the big lake's north end, which is slated to become a Guy Harvey Outpost RV Resort and Marina in 2017. An early-evening downpour had ended just before dark and we could hear the croaks, chirps, and burps of our quarry as soon as we hit the lake.
However, Stafford was a little uncertain about our dinner prospects because of a steep rise in water levels in the previous two weeks.
"Their whole habitat is getting readjusted to the high water," he said. "But I like frogging after the rain. I think the frogs climb up higher."
Wearing a bright headlamp, Stafford cruised the cattail marsh on the edge of the lake with his left hand on the tiller and his right holding a ten-foot-long, four-pronged gig like a pool cue. It's nearly impossible to spot a frog in tall cattails, so Stafford stuck to shallow sloughs coated with lily pads where the animals often sit out in the open. All that vegetation distracts the eye, but the guide knew what to look for.
"You have to look right in the light. Sometimes you see their yellow eyeball from a ways off. Sometimes you see the white of their throat," he explained.
Sweeping the swamp with his light, Stafford pulled back on the tiller to slow down and gigged a shiny, greenish-brown frog perched on a pad. He put his quarry in a fiberglass chute attached to a mesh catch bag and kept motoring.
"You're trying to hit them and time it just right," he said. "I aim for the head."
He stuck about a dozen more and missed a couple that dived under the lily pads at the airboat's approach. Every now and then his headlamp beam would catch a pair of ruby orbs-- a gator patrolling the marsh.
"When we find the frogs thick, there will be a lot of baby gators in there eating them," Stafford said.
But the frogs and gators seemed to be spaced pretty far apart; no mother lode as in previous weeks when water levels were lower. And Stafford passed up a few frogs that were too small to be worth cleaning.
On a normal four-hour recreational gigging trip, he said, he and guests could expect to harvest about 15 to 20 pounds of frog legs. Commercial froggers keeping at it all night might score as much as 100 pounds. Nearing midnight, after about 2 1/2 hours of hunting, Stafford had taken about 30 frogs, or three to five pounds of legs. The catch was still plenty for me, him, his wife and two sons served battered and deep-fried or sautéed in garlic and butter.
Purveyors of fine foods may dream up all sorts of frog leg dishes and wine pairings targeted to the palate of the sophisticated gourmand. But diners should remember that some guy in an airboat first had to find and stick that delectable entree and then dress it to make it presentable.
********************
Sue Cocking chronicles the Guy Harvey Outpost travel and adventure experience in regular blog posts on GuyHarveyOutpostNews.com/. For 21 years, Cocking covered the full spectrum of outdoors adventure opportunities in South Florida and beyond for the Miami Herald, including fishing, diving, hunting, paddling camping, sailing and powerboat racing. She is a certified scuba diver and holder of an IGFA women's world fly fishing record for a 29-pound permit.
**********
Share your photos, videos and experiences with Guy Harvey Outpost by hash tagging #OutpostAttitude to all of your social media posts. https://guyharveyoutpostblog.com/procuring-haute-cuisine-by-airboat-on-lake-okeechobee/){kind=link}
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