"La mujer es muy bonita."
"Muchas gracias, Señor. Es verdad."
"What are you saying to him?" Jerry asked.
"He said you are very beautiful and I said that's the Lord's gospel truth. He's sketching you, I think."
"Can we buy it if it's good?"
"I'll speak to him later. Up there."
The car stopped at the terminal on the man-made plateau about a thousand feet from the actual tip of Monte Azul. A wooden rail ran along the edge of the plateau for about a quarter of a mile. Within the rail was the funicular terminal, a souvenir stand, a tiny post office, and a large open-air restaurant.
"Let's eat," Hall said. "You get hungry as a horse up there."
They took a table with an enameled orange top near the rail. Large barbecue pits hugged the mountain side of the restaurant, and under a shed roof three cooks presided over a row of steaming pots. From their table, they could see the mile-deep belt of mountain flowers which had been planted in the days of the dictators and expanded by the democrats. There were flowers of every shape and color, but orange was the color which spoke most frequently in the cultivated beds. Below the flowers, the mountainside seemed to be daubed with various shades of green and brown. "But usually," Hall said, "the mountain is blue. Almost as blue as the sea."
Jerry looked down at the sea. "I've never seen such a deep blue," she said.