Years and years ago I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia. I had gone there without much expectation of fishing, but at some point I was told about a deep lake north of Bogota which held big trout. Another Volunteer, his girlfriend and my wife set out for the place for a long weekend. In those days, even on a Peace Corps salary (about $100 a month per Volunteer) we could afford to hire a car for the journey, which, as I recall, was about a four-hour drive from Bogota.

The beautiful body of water that greeted our eyes at the end of the drive, El Lago de Tota, was even higher in the Andes than Bogota, which lies at around 9,000 feet above sea level, and its azure waters remain clear and cold the year around, offering excellent trout habitat. My friend Marty and I looked at each other and practically rubbed our hands in glee in anticipation of the fishing we would have. We had made arrangements by telephone to rent a little wood-and-stone cabin across the lake from the town of Tunja. The four of us were ferried across the lake, which was larger than I had expected, by motorboat and dropped off on the little beach in front of the cabin. That shore of the lake was unpopulated, remote from any village, though we could see occasional little groups of campesinos, local herders and farmers, trudging along a winding dirt road a hundred yards behind the camp, herding sheep or leading donkeys laden with vegetables, apparently bound for some village market.

Marty and I were so confident of our chances for angling success we had not brought a lot of food. We would eat fish. But the trout of Lake Tota were keeping to themselves, in the depths beyond casting range, and we had no luck at all. After the second fishless day we were kind of hungry. No fish, and our other supplies were running low. The boat wouldn't return for two more days and there was no way to contact the boatman. The path behind the cabin was now deserted -- the local farmers' trek to the market was a weekly event, so we couldn't even purchase a potato from a passing campesino. My wife and I made an exhausting three-hour walk to the nearest village, hounded by a pack of mongrel dogs part of the way, only to find the town practically empty. Only one shop was open and its goods were all but gone. We managed to buy a few potatoes and onions and we trekked back to the cabin, arriving late in the afternoon, sore-footed and weary, to cook them on the wood fire.

The next morning we awakened to the sound of sheep bleating outside the cabin. I opened the door to have a look. A dozen or so sheep were grazing on the grass in front of the cabin. The shepherd, a young Indian boy of about ten years of age sat solemnly, crosslegged on the grass, wrapped in a brown wool poncho and wearing a broad black fedora over his braided hair. Arrayed in front of him in a neat, glistening row were eight fat rainbow trout, each about 14" long and deep through their silvery bellies.

"How much?" I asked.

The boy named what seemed like an exhorbitant price. The trout shone appetizingly in the clear, cold mountain sunlight. We swallowed our pride. We paid the price. We ate the trout.