In Moroni, the capital of the Comoros, Boris and I stopped at the Coelacanthe for a drink. This laid-back hotel was named after the prehistoric fish believed to be extinct sixty million years ago, but discovered in 1938 near the Comoran coast.

The waters off the hotel were a popular scuba diving spot, as they were conveniently located, and its volcanic rock coast plunged to a wealth of coral and fish.

Boris and I sat on the wooden balcony overlooking the swimming pool.

“Got a smoke?” I asked.

He tossed his pack of Camels across the table. I took one, lit it, leaned back in my chair and took a drag

“What’s Moroni like?” I asked.

“It’s okay…not much to do though. On weekends we go to the beach, hang out at the tennis club across the road.”

I asked him how the night life was in the Comoros.

“Pretty lame. Hard for us to organize a good party here. Even if you can get hold of imported liquor, it’s damn expensive. But the Comorans sure love to party. They’ll drink whisky like water if the bartender pours it discrete in a Coke to camouflage it. The empty liquor bottles after a party here outnumber anything I’ve seen in France or anywhere else.”

As Boris and I sat on the balcony overlooking the Indian Ocean, Jean-Louis Geraud, the hotel’s scuba diving instructor, returned from a dive with a group of tourists. He was a handsome Frenchman with curly black hair and a tanned body that appealed to the female diving tourists.

Boris waved to Jean Louis. “He’s been working with a scientific team from New York,” he told me. “Studying the first Coelacanth to be kept alive in captivity.”

Jean Louis came over and Boris introduced him to me.

“Boris tells me you’re working with a live Coelacanth. Any chance of seeing it?”               

 “Sure, come for a dive. We’re holding it in a big cage at 85 meters. Since it lives about 200 down, we have to bring it up gradually. To help it adapt to pressure changes.”

“I’ve only seen sketches of it. What’s it like really?”

“Big and ugly.”

He described a pre-historic creature with a large mouth of fang-like teeth, a strange double tail and lower fins resembling lower appendages, as if it never quite finished evolution. It had bony plates on the head and a body covered in heavy scales. A big acrobatic sea-lizard from the age of dinosaurs that swims forward and backward, lies on its back and does headstands.

Boris took a sip of Coke. “Imagine kids going to an aquarium and being able to see a living prehistoric creature. How’s it doing in captivity?”

“Not sure,” said Jean-Louis. “It didn’t look too good last time I went down…real slow and sluggish. Be surprised if it lives even a few more days.”

We later learned that in spite of all Jean Louis’ efforts, the coelacanth died the following day.