I peered from my window, and suddenly through a ragged little hole in the mist I saw something that almost took my breath away. “Yes,” I said, “we just passed the most beautiful waterfall I’ve ever seen.”
“Then here goes,” he said, a little grimly, and down we plunged through the cloud banks. Suddenly we were in a deep, narrow canyon, our wing tips almost seeming to touch the stark walls. No look of recognition crossed Joe’s face, and he said, “Hell.”
“There it is,” I shouted in excitement, pointing backward to the waterfall. Joe slowly banked and smiled when he saw it. “Now I know where we are. Not much fun flying blind when these clouds puff up to twenty-two thousand feet and more every day.”
He brought the plane up out of the canyon and circled slowly over the top of a barren mountain. “To give them time to chase all the cows off the field,” explained Joe.
We had flown over the second jungle cordillera, and now there remained the barren range to cross before we reached the desert coast. Joe had forgotten, apparently, anything as trivial as breakfast, and after depositing our passengers we took off from the barren mountain top. Gone was the lush green of the lowlands; we flew at about 17,000 feet with a sea of cloud below us.
With a sudden jerk we began to lose altitude. Joe said, “Now hang on, because we’re leaving the mountains and coming to the desert. When we hit the coastal plains the heat makes the air damned bumpy.”
I did hang on with all my strength while the little plane was tossed and buffeted as if she were a ship at sea. Before us stretched the narrow coastal desert, white in the glaring sun, and in the distance, the blue line of the Pacific.
“Now,” said Joe, as he gently deposited the ship on the runway, “I know she loves me.”
“Meaning, I suppose, your wife?” I asked. It startled me to realize how unquestionably one American can accept another in an alien land. I'd known Joe for about fourteen hours—I still knew nothing more than that I was hugely enjoying my junket with a boyish, barnstorming aviator such as only America seems to produce. He showed me a picture of his three-year-old son, who was a small replica of himself.
Chiclayo is a small coastal city that looks probably like many another Spanish town with its palm trees and flowers, its plazas. It looked like heaven to me, after lonely months in the jungle and its hostile villages. This was civilization, and there would be civilized food.
In the cool patio of the Chiclayo hotel, with its white-covered tables under the palms, the distinguished Spanish chef who, with his pointed little beard, looked more like a grand seigneur than a cook, did us the honor of personally advising us about luncheon.
“First, Señora,” he said, with a little secret smile, “I offer a very special Spanish potage, higate. It is, we think, exquisita.” He emphasized its quality by an equally exquisite little gesture.
He came back after the potage was half finished for our verdict on it. We had both guessed again and again as to what might be the ingredients of the dark rich sopa, with its evasive flavor.
“Of what,” I inquired, “do you make this rara avis of potages?”
“Ah, Señora,” he smiled, “I cannot give you the exact recipe of its making because it is my secret … even in Spain few chefs know how to prepare this delicacy. But,” with an expansive gesture of both hands, “I will tell you that in it there are figs and almonds; there are also young chickens and Guinea fowl boiled together. There are,” he counted them off on his fingers, “sugar, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, pimiento, cloves, and a dash of garlic.”
He smiled with a flash of white teeth and said, “And for the next course, Señora, may I suggest cabrito asado? It is rather corriente, but I can safely recommend it.”
Roast kid is a rather common dish in many parts of South America and Mexico, but it is usually excellent. In fact, one often eats kid chops and mistakes them for lamb.
The delicious flan, which is a caramel pudding, had just disappeared down our appreciative throats when the local manager of the airline joined us and said, “Joe, the regular schedule is off. We’ve got a little job for you at Trujillo. The Englishman who has the mine up in the mountains wants you to fly up some machinery for him.”
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