While Gamay arranged her gear, Paul started the outboard motor and headed them out of the lagoon onto the slow-moving river. The inky water changed to a strained-pea green. The dolphin kept pace, but when he saw there would be no more treats, he peeled off like a fighter plane. Before long the thick jungle along the river gave way to a clearing. A handful of thatched huts were grouped around a white stucco house with a red tile roof and arcade facade in the Spanish colonial style.

They tied up at a small pier, hauled their gear from the boat, and walked to the stucco building, trailing a chattering gang of half naked Indian children. The youngsters were shooed away by the housekeeper, a formidable Spanish-Indian woman who wielded a broom like a battle-ax. Paul and Gamay went inside. A silver-haired man in his sixties, wearing a white shirt with an embroidered front, cotton slacks, and handmade sandals, rose from his desk in the coolness of the study where he had been working on a pile of papers. He strode over to greet them with obvious pleasure. “Senor and Senora Trout. Good to see you. Your work went well, I trust.”

“Very well, Dr. Ramirez. Thank you,” Gamay said. “I had the chance to catalog more dolphin behavior, and Paul wrapped up his computer modeling of the river.”

“I had very little to do with it, actually,” Paul said. “It was mostly a question of alerting researchers at the Amazon Basin project of Gamay's work here and asking them to point the LandSat satellite in this direction. I can finish the computer modeling when we get home, and Gamay will use it as part of her habitat analysis.”

“I'll be very sorry to see you go. It was kind of the National Underwater & Marine Agency to lend its experts for a small research project.”

Gamay said, “Without these rivers and the flora and fauna that grow here, there would be no ocean life.”

“Thank you, Senora Gamay. As a way of appreciation I have prepared a special dinner for your last night here.”

“That's very nice of you,” Paul said. “We'll pack early so we'll be ready for the supply boat.” “I wouldn't be too concerned,” he said. “The boat is always late.”

“Fine with us,” Paul replied. “We'll have time to talk some more about your work.”

Ramirez chuckled. “I feel like a troglodyte. I still practice my science of botany the old way, cutting plants, preserving and comparing them, and writing reports nobody reads.” He beamed. “Our little river creatures have never had better friends than you.” Gamay said. “Perhaps our work will show where the dolphins' habitat is under environmental threat. Then something can be done about it.”

He shook his head sadly. “In Latin America, government tends to move slowly unless there is someone's pocket to be filled. Worthwhile projects sink into the morass.”

“Sounds like home. Our bottomless swamp is named Washington, D.C.”