Round The Bend by Alistair McGuinness
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Matador (January 16, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1780883900
ISBN-13: 978-1780883908
From the Amazon to the Andes and Kilimanjaro to Cape Town.
This adventure story captures the reality and exhilaration of leaving home to undertake Gap Year travel in South America, Africa, Fiji and Australia.
Three things happened simultaneously.
The lioness charged, Alistair fled across the parched savannah and his wife screamed for him to run faster. Stuffed deep inside his tattered rucksack was a guidebook containing advice on what to do in wildlife emergencies, which he planned to read if he survived the next thirty seconds.
Future plans to climb Kilimanjaro, teach English in the Amazon and live in Australia were temporarily forgotten as he turned to face the pouncing lioness, thinking back to the words of advice from his mother-in-law. “Don’t do anything silly, and look after Francine.”
From deep underground in a remote Bolivian mine to the scorched Australian outback, Round the Bend is an adventure travel story. It explores the turbulence of redundancy, the excitement of travel, the anguish of leaving home and the challenges of starting a new life in Australia.
Thoughts
A very interesting book that takes you to places you probably would never travel to. It was inspiring to read where they’ve gone and the amazing things they did.
The book brought out the adventurerer in me and I found myself wanting to go to far away places and experience a little of what Allistar and his wife have, except I don’t know if I’d have the guts to do most of what they did. They surely did some amazing things and got into some frightening situations. The author also has a sense of humor and that added greatly to the book.
This would be a good book for anyone who had an adventurous spirit.