On a wet September morning, La Unión, a sparsely populated town in Costa Rica’s northeast, Rolando Álvarez and his two young sons directed their horses into the jungle. For the youngest son, Jean Carlos, 10, the ride was tinged with excitement and dread. His small horse powered over the trail and sent mud flying, and the bouncing boy strained to see through twisting foliage.
Civetone is a chemical compound derived from the scent glands of civets, smallish nocturnal cat-like critters native to the Asian and African tropics, and it's one of the world's oldest perfume ingredients.