"Do you like this hotel?" asked Sandoval, the Indian. He smiled his slow, dark smile, and picking up my duffle bag from the stern of the dugout canoe, tossed it on the sandy river bank. "Oh, very much," I replied, looking at the three frail huts that stood on the sands close to the encroaching wall of jungle green. They were built like pup tents, open fore and aft, made by the simple expedient of sticking in the earth about five or six large palm fronds on each side and overlapping them on top. "Would you like this one?" he asked graciously, depositing my camp cot and bag before the seemingly most substantial one. I nodded; and as he returned to the canoe for the rest of the gear, he said gravely over his shoulder, "I shall send someone with the menu and the wine list." This was the beginning of a game that Sandoval, my guide, and I played in some of the wildest spots of South America, and this was not the least of them. We had been journeying for many days now: first there had been the long trip from Lima up over the westernmost Andes, crossing a 16,000-foot pass on the highest railway in the world, then over a goat trail in a truck, rocketing over a 15,000-foot pass in darkness -- down among the hanging terraces of the Incas, up again to the glaciered heights and a 14,000-foot pass, and down, down to the lush jungles...
Posted on: Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:02:30 +0000
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