For the Bulwer-Lytton Contest?

He was at that time trying to learn enough Uruguayan Portuguese or Brazilian Spanish for his trip to South America. There his family had a cattle ranch near the border that needed attention, having fallen on hard times due to mismanagement

It was a difficult enough task to find a teacher who was a native speaker, but to find one who knew Flemish was almost impossible. After a lengthy search and a series of classified ads in the Brussels newspapers, he found a young woman with a degree in comparative linguistics who had recently graduated from the University of Ghent. She accepted his offer of a job to accompany him and to act as interpreter.

Together they traveled by train to Friedrichshafen, where they had booked a flight on the "Graf Zeppelin" on her maiden voyage to Rio de Janeiro. Except for an electrical storm off the West African coast that provided some excitement, the flight was pleasant and uneventful.

From Rio, they went south by train to the railhead at São Brás da Fonseca, and then by car and by oxcart, arriving at their destination, the small village of Pedras Negras, in a drenching tropical rain. The land portion of the trip had taken as long as the Zeppelin flight across the Atlantic.

Over the course of six months, under the manager's care and the young interpreter's skill, the cattle ranch showed clear signs of improvement. Better quality cattle feed was imported from Argentina, new wells were dug, and the spring crop of calves exceeded in number the total from the three prior years'.

(To be continued)