Beni drives us in a carriage that scurries over the hills like a swift insect, or a spider. Finally, we reach a thatched farmhouse with a clean-swept earthen floor and an outdoor kitchen and the tranquil coziness of a country home where the people are poor but hardworking and filled with love for one another. Our hosts are peasants from the Canary Islands, a remote outpost of volcanic, stony fields and vineyards off the southern coast of Spain, not far from Morocco. Our beds are hammocks. The woman is up early blowing a conch-shell trumpet to call her husband and sons in from the fields for a simple breakfast of fish, corn, and yams. All the bowls, spoons, and cups are made from gourds, the hard, dry fruit of a calabash tree that grows near the house along with every other variety of fruit tree known in the tropics: mango, sapote, mamey, tamarind, and half a dozen different types of bananas, some tiny, and others huge. . . . It is a garden of delightful scents and enchanted flavors . . .
