Former Cannibal Finds Meat Tough

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30953, 8 January 1966, Page 14

Former Cannibal Finds Meat Tough

'The Press" Special Service

AUCKLAND, Jan. 7. South America is a travel writer’s paradise. There is material there for a thousand best-sellers but research can be a bit tricky. Mr K. Olafsson, an Icelandic author of books on Paraguay and Costa Rica, said in Auck-

land that when he collected the material for his writing he had to dodge not one but two revolutions. The bandits and the revolutionaries were only some of the interesting people Mr Olafsson met in his South American travels. His most intriguing chat was with a former cannibal in Colombia, a 70-year-old Indian woman who recalled that in the old days her tribe used to hold prisoners in pens like cattle and slaughter them for fresh meat.

She complained that the meat she bought today in the market was old and tough—and far too dear. Mr Olafsson did not attend a cannibal meal, but he did meet slave holders who bought Indian tribesmen, captured in battle, to work on their properties. These were the sort of anecdotes, Mr Olafsson said, which boosted a travel book into the best-seller list. The Icelandic writer is a trained economist and a linguist, but he has always avoided filling his books with statistics and historical data. Icelanders are avid readers

—lceland publishes three times as many books, a head of population, as any other country—and they like their travel yarns to have a dash of adventure in them. Mr Olafsson arrived in Auckland in the liner Rangitoto to have a quick look around New Zealand before going on to Tonga and New Guinea. In New Guinea he expects to collect most of the material for his next book; and to meet another cannibal.