Viktor, meanwhile, was having troubles of his own. Airlines will allow many types of pets to travel with their owners, but for some reason Dai She did not understand, the no-fly list includes vultures. Unable to travel with his master, Viktor was left to his instincts to find his way to Dai She’s destination. For several hours he hugged the coastline, soaring on wind currents that enabled him to cover maximum distance with minimal effort.

Vultures are best known as scavengers, but their diet extends beyond roadkill. As Viktor flew, he kept an eye out for potential meals along the cliffs. He could hardly believe his luck when he spotted an abandoned nest with two large bluish-white eggs.

Just as he approached the rocky ledge, however, the wind shifted. Instead of making a graceful (by vulture standards) landing, he slammed headlong into the cliff.

Viktor fell beside the nest in an unconscious heap.

Dai She had previously arranged to have a private jet take him a few hours north to Chihuahua City, where he had a car waiting for the next leg of his journey. But because of his excessive travel delays, the jet took off without him. What little Spanish he knew allowed him to successfully negotiate new transportation with the seedy owners of a small propeller-driven aircraft. (Calling it a plane, he decided, would be giving it too much credit.)

He finally settled into the open-cockpit backseat of what he surmised to be a crop duster, which held only enough fuel to take him to Los Mochis on the Mexican coast. The aircraft’s name was stenciled on its side. An hour into the flight, Dai She puzzled out the rough translation: Smoke and Choke. And that it did.

Exhaustion had left him weak. He hadn’t eaten in almost a day and wouldn’t dare drink the water. On a trip through Mexico many years earlier he had learned a lifelong lesson when tiny parasites in the water gave him a severe case of diarrhea—or as it was best known, Montezuma’s revenge.

Despite his physical and mental fatigue, he managed to find his way to the Los Mochis train station, where he caught his first break. The Copper Canyon train was just about to depart for Chihuahua City. His spirits soared when he saw that the train also stopped in Cuauhtémoc. The promise of rest, relaxation, and a good meal occupied his thoughts as the train rumbled out of the station.

Six separate canyons make up what is commonly known as the Copper Canyon. Formed by a half-dozen rivers, it is more than six times larger than the Grand Canyon and offers some of the most breathtaking scenery in the world. The railway had taken nearly a hundred years to build, and it featured three dozen canyon-spanning bridges and close to one hundred tunnels.