A secret to enjoying travel is to learn to dine with the natives. But it isn't always easy. Of course, if you are going to Paris, dining with the natives there can be quite pleasant. Let me give you an example. I had a friend in Paris who lived there and wanted to impress me with his knowledge of French food. He insisted we go to a restaurant in the Bois de Bougine for a "Food from the Hunt" meal. It was a meal I could never forget.

For appetizers we had a vast choice which included things I never ever heard of before--pate of wild turkey, smoked wild goose and bouchee Forestier, to name a few.

Then came the entrees: Braised leg of hare Robespierre, elk-pfeffer Prince de la Foret noir, civet of venison, roast pheasant a l'Alsacienee, roast mallard duck with chestnut dressing, saddle of hare Grande Veneur, medallions of venison, pheasant en casserole. I had no idea what all those French names meant. I left the ordering to my friend.

We started with Gamekeepers broth and a dry sauterne wine. We then tried the pate of wild turkey for an appetizer, followed by grilled venison chops for the entree, with Mousse-line potatoes, braised red cabbage, and buttered bruise sprouts. For desert we all had out-of-season strawberries Romanoff with fresh whipped cream. And the wines that came with the meal were nothing like we had back home. We had a Medoc 1958.

Now I must tell readers the truth. I could have had a hamburger and enjoyed it more, except then, 40 some years ago, Paris didn't have McDonalds or even hamburgers for that matter. Harry's New York Bar near the Opera did serve hotdogs, but that was more a gimmick than anything.

That was yesterday. Were I to go back to that restaurant in the Bois and have hare Robespierre and elkpfeffer Prince de la Foret noir, I'm sure I would enjoy every bite. In fact, I would be enthralled. Since then, a long time ago, a lot of plates of food, bad and good, have passed before me. The passing of years has taught me to appreciate food, or at least respect the so-called "good" food that you find around the world when you travel.

But it didn't come easy. The fact remains, appreciating "good" food is not a trait that comes naturally. It is something that has to be taught, or "acquired." One who has never tasted fondu or goose liver pate sauted in wine sauce cannot be expected to enjoy such delicacies when they are presented for the first time. The same if we were to try Thai Tom Yam or Malaysian Nasi Goering for the first time. It takes training to like Tom Yam.

That first time I went to Paris, I was right from the farm. The only cooking I knew was home cooking. Now, I'm not knocking home cooking. It was great. But there's a difference.

As a kid growing up on a farm in America, we worked hard, and we ate heartedly. Breakfast was the big meal of the day, which my mother started preparing before dawn--scrapple and sausage, a little smoked bacon, four eggs per person, five pieces of toasts, home-made jam, a couple glasses of bubbly fresh milk delivered that morning, followed by pots of coffee and freshly baked poppy-seed rolls. And there was always a couple kinds of fruit pies on the table.

Every meal was gigantic. Food did not come in courses; it came all at once on a heavy oak table ten feet long. Hams, chickens, roasts, vegetables, salad, ears of corn, jars of pickles, green onions, jugs of drinks from milk to fruit juices and sometimes even the desert was all stacked on the table at same time.

Now in Paris my world was to be turned topsy-turvy. Style became as important as taste. My whole approach to food was about to change. I would learn something about European history and political science at the Sarbonne, but in the cafes and restaurants of Paris I learned to educate my pallet.

Paris taught me to enjoy good food, but travelling to distant and strange lands of the world taught me something else. If we travel a great deal, it would be impossible, of course, to learn and appreciate all the food of the many countries we visit. The secret is to respect the cuisines of those countries. The national food of a country reflects its ethnic background, but it also reflects the country's environment as well. Environment plays an important role. In the tropics, inclination is towards hot and spicy food, just as in Scandinavia and Ireland you don't find chilies and curries.

But it isn't as simple as stated. Each country has its own food and to enjoy it may call for a required taste. And not always is the food of distant lands palatable. This is where the difficulty begins. You can't always turn down the food that's offered to you when you are a guest. It would be in bad taste, literally.

Example, years ago I visited a Cuna Indian village in South America. The Cuna were friendly and invited me to dine with them. The women, with hanging earlobes and nose rings, sat in a circle around a huge wooden bowl. The men had gathered roots from the jungles, and the women were chewing them, and then spitting the pulp into the wooden bowl. When the bowl was filled, they carried it out into the opening and placed it in the hot sun for the afternoon to ferment. I had no idea the bubbling content was to be our communal drink with the evening meal.

The main course was monkey. The men brought down half a dozen monkeys with blowpipes. These they threw whole into the open fire, fur and all. The Cuna couldn't understand why I ate so little.

Meat is a food that is accepted by most cultures around the world. In general, people of the world are meat eaters. What happens when there is a scarcity of meat? In the islands of the western Pacific---New Guinea, Vanuatu, Solomons and Fiji--the natives there became cannibals. Anthropologists claim necessity made them so. The reason, the islands had no indigenous animals. The pig, introduced by early traders, became the islanders most prized possession. Man's worth was judged by the amount of pigs he owned, and a pig could buy a new wife. This crave for meat turned islanders into cannibals. They ate one another, or anyone who came to their shores.

Cannibalism, like head hunting, has been outlawed in most societies, but it has not been completely stamped out. A few years back I sailed my schooner on an exploration voyage to many of these islands. We had been warned that some islands were still untamed, and if we did go there, to go with caution.

In the Nimbas Islands we found the carving of meat so great that when natives at a festival do not have enough meat to go around, they adhered to a most unusual culinary habit. They take a piece of meat, tie it to a string, chew it, and then swallow it, holding on to one end of the string. Then they pull the meat up from their stomachs and hand it over to another who is anxiously waiting. It's not very appetizing.

At another island we rowed ashore and were greeted by the headman. We heard there was a missionary on the island, and in our poor Pidgin English enquired where he might be, but all the chief kept saying was, "Him belly full up." We later had someone interpret the words, which mean--"We ate him." We soon learned when you are invited to dinner on a cannibal island, it might mean you are not being invited to eat but to be eaten?

Dining on the Australian Outback isn't cordon blue either. I was making a drive westward from Alice Springs across the MacDonnell Range through some wild, untamed country--no roads to follow, and no garages or petrol stations--and with most space taken up with fuel and water we had to depend upon hunting to supplement our diet, which meant dining on kangaroo.

Some kangaroo we saw stood six feet tall, yet at birth, were no larger than a thumbnail. We had been awakened at night by the kookaburra, a bird that laughs like a human. We had watched the brolga, a bird which dances like a drunken sailor, and we had driven in chase of seven-foot high, flightless emus, only to have them outrun us. But the most fascinating life we saw were the aborigines.

We watched them come out of the desert, lone hunters, javelins in hand, and others in groups, several dozen people on the move. They were primitive, ones who still gouge their bodies with flaming sticks, and hunt with boomerang and spear.

To survive in the harsh environment, which provides little food and often no water, the aborigine has learned to eat whatever the land has to offer, whether it be insects, worms, snakes of lizards. A kangaroo can be a banquet.

One afternoon, after we shot a kangaroo for meat, we found ourselves surrounded by half a hundred aborigines. It was a tense moment. Were they hostile? Did they consider the kangaroo theirs? We couldn't make it to the vehicle without arousing suspicion. I had to take a chance. I bent over and slowly cut a haunch from the carcass. Stepping back, still holding the haunch, I pointed to the animal and indicated it was theirs.

It worked. They moved in on the dead animal. A young man reached into the kangaroo's pouch and withdrew a small Joey, only about six inches long. It had pinkish skin, like an unborn rat with closed eyes. The man then walked up to an old man standing in the rear and presented him the Joey. The old man nodded, took the Joey and bit into it like one would bite into a ham sandwich, chomping down to the sound of bones cracking, with blood and intestines running down his jaws.

This gave cause for others to light a fire, and for us to slip unnoticed back to our vehicle. Once we reached the security of the vehicle, I looked down on the scene. When the fire was blazing, they picked up the kangaroo and tossed it--fur, intestines and all--into the flame. The fire had hardly singed the fur when they dragged it out and like a pack of wild animals pounced upon it with claws tearing away at the flesh and bones. No table manner here.

One afternoon we unexpectedly came upon a cattle drive camp. Drovers squatted around a smoldering fire. Beyond them was the herd, tended by aborigines on horseback. The men poured us tea from a billy and asked, "Had your tucker yet?"

I said we hadn't. A drover grabbed his rifle, walked over to the nearest steer, and shot him dead. Another drover cut the steer into steaks which he tossed directly into the ashes. When he saw me looking, amazed, he said, "Ashes don't hurt nobody." It was a great feed.

For the traveller, knowing and appreciating the food of each country adds another dimension to travelling. Food is the soul, the very pulse beat of a country. Food is a reflection of the people themselves. Unfortunately, you can't always eat what is given you.

Ever eat balute in the Philippines. That's another story.