TASTE OF TRAVEL : Floating Down the Rio Grande, Wineglass in Hand : San Antonio chef makes a sideline of wilderness journeys where the food vies with nature for richness and variety.

By JAMES BADHAM

March 14, 1993 12 AM PT

<i> Badham is an associate editor with Bon Appetit magazine who lives in Los Angeles. </i>

TERLINGUA, Tex. — Wilderness chow used to consist of bug juice in a canteen, wilted cheese on a cracker, burned pork and beans in an old tin cup. Eggs and potatoes were mixed from powder. Canned spaghetti was a treat. Instant pudding was the piece de resistance. The only way to get a spot of fresh grub was to outwit a trout.

Not so these days, if you do what I and 10 others did and sign up for a “gourmet float” along a lazy, gentle, 20-mile stretch of the Rio Grande as it meanders along the border between Texas and Mexico. In this brave new world of wilderness travel, the pate is as important as the topography, the appetizer as inspiring as the fresh air, the dinner a fitting tribute to the splendor of the great outdoors. In other words, in 2 1/2 days on the river, not a single instant egg would be seen.

The trips that run from near the tiny mining town of Terlingua southeast to nowhere are offered periodically through the combined efforts of Far Flung Adventures, headquartered near Big Bend National Park in Terlingua, and Francois Maeder, a Swiss-born chef who can usually be found manning the stoves at his San Antonio restaurant, Crumpets. Maeder and Far Flung will join forces on the river several times this spring and summer and several more in the fall. When they do, the good life comes along for the ride.

That was only too evident from a quick inventory of the gear being loaded into six inflatable boats last April. It included glass stemware; gold-rimmed china; a couple of ice chests of French, California and Australian white wine, and crates of various red vintages. “On these trips we carry about a third more gear than a regular run,” said Far Flung marketing director Pat Brown, who was one of six boatmen on our trip.

The first day was spent drifting through open terrain, with the scrub-covered slopes of the Mesa de Anguila mountains rising monumentally in the distance to the north. For most of the last century, this part of the Chihuahua Desert was Indian and outlaw country, an unsettled land where, as Paul Horgan wrote in “Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History”: “The desert closes against the river, and the gritty wastelands crumble into its very banks, and nothing lives but creatures of the dry and hot.” From a position of mid-river comfort, with a cooler of cold drinks just a reach away, I reckon it more along the lines of exquisite desolation, with grit not even rating an afterthought.

Nor can our group be described as outlaws.

Take Connie Tuthill, for instance, a CPA and experienced white-water rafter with a couple of two-week Grand Canyon trips under her belt. She was lured to the Rio Grande by a photo showing Maeder serving food, with a bottle of wine in the foreground and the river sweeping by beyond.

“I liked the idea of having a glass of wine by the river,” she said, while doing just that. “The picture planted the idea; all I needed then was an accomplice.” Her neighbor, Anne Romano, a mother of two, was it. They left their husbands and children home and drove the 12 hours from Houston. A first-time rafter, Anne came back hooked. “It was easy-going,” she said later. “We weren’t in the rafts for hours on end; they were big on safety; they provided you with all the comforts, and there was plenty of good food, good wine and bad jokes.”

By midmorning it is getting steamy, so over the side some of us go. I float along on my back with my toes downstream, my eyes to the sky, my thoughts spinning lazy like a lariat in a dream.

It isn’t long until we pull up onto a broad sandspit for lunch. Boatmen have no specific tasks; they just pitch in where needed, with amazing efficiency. In no time, they have put up a couple of tables, spread a tablecloth, set up a cooler of beer and a jug each of water and Gatorade, and produced a big wooden bowl of guacamole. There is no cooking at lunch, so things are simpler than at night, but hero sandwiches are made with dark rye, whole wheat or sourdough bread and more ingredients than even Dagwood could want: ham, turkey breast, salami, cheeses, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, peppers . . . We leave the beach spotless and climb back into the boats.

Big birds--mostly buzzards and an occasional hawk--ride thermals over the river. We spot one making big arcs with a long snake hanging from its talons. We are floating through a nature film.

By about 3 p.m. we’re set up for the night, with a sprawling campsite and a serious kitchen on a long, graceful beach. Maeder dons a camouflage toque and prepares dessert, which is chilled for later. A few guests nap in the warm afternoon, a couple sit in lawn chairs in the river; others swim or read.

Before long it’s happy hour and we gather at a long, linen-covered dining table (actually a collection of several folding tables) set on a pebbly beach backed by a sand dune. We snack on Gulf shrimp marinated in olive oil and herbs and sprinkled with feta cheese. Guitarist Terry Muska, now wearing black tie and Bermuda shorts, plays Bach, accompanied by distant thunder. Late sunlight slants through, turning on color. We sip Sauvignon Blanc and shower the air with adjectives.

It was the image of something like this running through her mind that convinced Janet Grandinetti of Spicewood, Tex., to make a birthday present of the trip to her husband, Nick, a pharmaceuticals executive.

“I’ve always wanted to be on the river,” she said, sipping her Australian Chardonnay and looking fresh enough for a country club picnic. “I thought this would be the perfect way to go: camping and great food served on china.”

With that we turn to the first course, which is served just before last light: linguine with fresh crab claws in a garlicky cream-and-herb sauce. It’s good and even better in this striking context--seated at a carefully appointed table on a beach; wearing sandals, shorts and sweat shirts, with the sun firing the canyons and mesas, birds flitting by and the river spinning its lazy liquid spell.

Pasta is followed by a salad of young greens with vinaigrette, before switching to Cabernet Sauvignon to go with grilled beef tenderloin in a peppercorn sauce served with fresh steamed broccoli. It’s all delicious, and why not, muses Maeder, surveying the two four-burner stoves and the grill. “The only thing missing is the automatic dishwasher and a few implements. The only thing that can go wrong is rain or the occasional sandstorm.”

We experience neither, just Champagne and a feathery fruit parfait for dessert, with coffee and Cognac for the finale. We are full and happy, with a total understanding of why the boatmen call this trip the “float and bloat.” A serious stupid-joke fest follows dinner. One by one the group shrinks. The sky rains stars.

It’s sweat-shirt weather until 9 o’clock or so the next morning, by which time breakfast is on the table. There’s cowboy coffee from a big pot, orange juice, pastry and eggs Benedict with freshly made hollandaise. We bloat, then load up and float. Digestion is our only task--and it’s passive.

As good as the food is, it is no match for the impression made by Santa Elena Canyon, which we reach late Saturday morning. It’s a stunning sight, a geographic crossroads where, over tens of thousands of years, the insistent eastward-flowing river has severed the limestone spine of the Santa Elena Mountains, carving a dramatic seven-mile-long, 1,500-foot-deep gash through the mountains to the desert on the other side. It is the reason for floating this particular stretch of river, and a big part of why San Antonio anesthesiologists Peggy and Jim Sims came.

“I’ve always wanted to float through Santa Elena,” Jim said. “It’s one of the scenic beauty spots in Texas, and a float is the only way to get in. And to do it like this--waking late, stopping early, having all the food and a little happy hour makes it memorable.”

He, I and anyone else with a camera are clicking like mad as we enter the canyon. The south side is all shadow, the north awash in sunlight. The opposing cliff lines carve the sky into a craggy arrow pointing downriver like a promise. The sun-bleached desert yields to a variegated world of shadow and light. Swifts and canyon wrens dart by like trick craft, their songs filling the canyon bottom. The milky brown water looks green. What a spot!

We land for lunch on a beach backed by giant boulders, between which sprout a dozen types of flowers and grasses. We sprawl like lizards or abuse our arms skipping the perfectly round, flat stones that litter the beach. They bounce a jillion times across the smooth water, then hit the base of the cliff on the other side with a pure, clear click. The boatmen prepare a chef’s salad with all the trimmings to go with bread and cheese and cold beer.

That afternoon brings more stunning scenery, and a run through the only real white-water on the trip. We pass overhanging grottoes where swallows dart, dragonflies hum and ferns bow to the sweep of the water.

I have never camped anywhere quite like the place we spend this night. The cliffs’ presence is overwhelming. A boatman tells us that a rafter on an earlier journey said that if light were music, the canyon would be a symphony. The volume is turned all the way up as I sip a glass of Sauvignon Blanc at sunset, warm my taste buds with three kinds of pate-- goose liver, chicken-vegetable and veal--and watch the light blast a cliff into gold.

By now, we know the drill. Happy hour, wine, deep relaxation. The night’s menu begins with a salad of fresh greens, fat tomatoes and feta cheese. Pasta with pesto is next, with rack of lamb, baked potatoes and fresh vegetables for the main course. We’re all fast friends now, and we chatter back and forth, like people who have known each other for years. Someone notices that differences tend to fall away. It’s true. People unlike each other are linked by a shared reverence for their surroundings.

Maybe J.L. Lucas of Lake Jackson, Tex., a retired chemical engineer, said it best: “I’ve always had a fear of dying doing something meaningless like looking at an oscilloscope. But if I die on the river, it’s OK.”

Especially if one’s last meal were this one, and one’s final dessert Maeder’s creme de glace on shortbread with fresh fruit, with Terry and a couple of boatmen taking turns on the guitar.

I sleep in the grass under a glittering sky. I hang onto consciousness as a dying man would; sleep like one who’s left the world; wake to bird song bouncing off the canyon walls; rise to a breakfast of coffee and chilequillas, a sort of grand breakfast burrito.

A couple miles downriver, we exit the canyon, stopping at a beach on the Mexican side of the river for one last lunch and a final look up the gorge. We’d all like to keep going, or to start again. But instead, we think about our part of the Big Bend, pack it up into memory and try to take it with us.

GUIDEBOOK

River-Rafting Rumination

Getting there: From LAX, fly Southwest nonstop to El Paso, Tex. (starts at about $150, advance purchase), or, with one stop, to San Antonio (about $240, advance purchase). Connecting round-trip service is available on America West to both El Paso and San Antonio (about $240, advance purchase). From El Paso or San Antonio, take Amtrak to Alpine, Tex. (service three days a week starting at $75 from El Paso and $88 from San Antonio). A Far Flung Adventures shuttle van will pick up a minimum of four passengers ($54 per person, round trip) at the train station and take them the last 80 miles to Terlingua. Or rent a car in Alpine. Passengers are picked up at the end of the rafting trip and returned by van to Terlingua.

Rafting/dining trips: Far Flung Adventures (915-371-2489): rafting/dining trips in Texas ($550 per person, not including transportation to and from Terlingua) April 2-4, April 23-25 and May 14-16, plus one near Santa Fe, N.M. ($550)--that one with real white water--June 24-26). More in the fall.

Northwest Dories and Grand Canyon Dories (800-877-3679) in Altaville, Calif.: two companies that have joined forces to offer 4- to 19-day trips (from $599 to $2,850 per person, river trip only) down the Salmon River in Idaho, Snake in Idaho, Owyhee in Oregon, Grande Ronde in Oregon, the Colorado in Arizona, San Juan in Utah. Dutch-oven enchilada casseroles, baked pork chops and pineapple upside-down cake, grilled marinated chicken, omelets. With advance notice, vegetarian, kosher or other special diets can be accommodated. Salmon River Outfitters (209-795-4041) in Arnold, Calif.: fine food served on six-day floats down the Salmon River in Idaho ($1,070 per person, river trip only) and on trips in Ireland ($2,550 per person, river trip only) and New Zealand ($4,750 per person, river trip only). Gruyere souffles, blueberry coffeecake, beef-Dijon shish kebab and poached salmon. Also, special wine-tasting trips, with wine from different wineries served each night. A musician usually joins those excursions.

--J.B.