When You Look Back Ad By Dale Carnegie

A RICH, MILD LONG-LASTING CIGAR

SHOWN ACTUAL SIZE

Getting to the Hidden Valley of the Jalapa River is like going through boot training in the Marines all over again -- only rougher.

There are 15 rivers to cross and only 7 bridges. We had to ford the streams with four-wheel drive jeeps to get around down there -- and the locals had to build a special airport to fly their tobacco crops out to civilization. I was tracked by a jaguar, avoided the embrace of an enormous boa constrictor, was jeered at by monkeys and stared at by a suspicious mountain lion. I ate the eggs of the baby dinosaur (that's what they call their iguanas) and they were delicious. I sampled the dinosaur meat, too, and it's even better than the eggs. I was even stopped and frisked as a suspicious character by the local gendarmerie. And when I asked them why they carried both six-shooters and shovels, they carefully explained their "six-by-six" justice to me. When they find a bandit, they use the six-shooter first -- then the shovel to put him six feet under. It's civil rites, instead of civil rights down there, and there's a high turnover -- or turnover -- in the bandit population. But the best is often the hardest to get to -- and I made it to the Hidden Valley, where ex-Cubans plow their way around ancient Mayan monuments to plant some of the very best cigar tobacco in the world. I bought lots of filler tobacco from the last crop (it'll be ready for shipment in about six months). But one little farm I visited yielded a real bonanza: 11 bales of prime sungrown wrapper that's as rich and finely textured as any I've ever seen. It was a small lot and I had to talk fast with both hands in two languages to get the farmer to part with it. He was curing it himself and didn't want to let it go. I put this wrapper in a box, took off in the rain over a runway full of puddles and brought the lot back to the States.