Showing posts with label travel book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel book. Show all posts

09 March 2010

great book - "Don't Look Behind You: True Tales of a Safari Guide" by Peter Allison

In Peter Allison's own words: These are the stories of a not particularly brave safari guide... As a child I knew that I was afraid of heights, and while uncomfortable admitting any phobia, was glad to have only one. Then I met my first crocodile. Now I know that there are at least two things in the world that unhinge my knees with fear, sour my breath, and overwhelm me with an urge to squeeze my eyes shut and wake up somewhere else. In this companion to "Don't Run, Whatever You Do", Peter Allison encounters ravenous lions, stampeding elephants and lovesick rhinos. He recounts his hairy, and often hilarious, adventures in a private section of South Africa's famous Kruger National Park and in Botswana's Okavango Delta, where desert animals from the Kalahari make their homes next to aquatic creatures like hippos, and where the unusual becomes commonplace. It is written with a wonderful, gentle humour evocative of Gerald Durrell. One can almost feel the heat from the campfire flames as the stories are told. [src.]

Peter Allison is the author of Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide (Lyons Press). His safaris have been featured in such magazines as Vogue and CondΓ© Nast Traveller, and he has assisted National Geographic photographers and appeared on television shows such as Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures. He currently lives in Sydney, Australia.

get Don't Look Behind You! in the TravelComments.com eShop >

08 December 2009

"The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe" by Douglas Rogers


The Last Resort
is a dark, comic, true-life thriller about Lyn and Ros Rogers, white Africans of many generations, struggling to hold on to their game farm and backpacker lodge in Robert Mugabe's war-torn Zimbabwe. Travel writer Douglas Rogers returns to the family farm from his home in Brooklyn, New York to discover that marijuana is growing instead of maize; prostitutes, diamond dealers, and refugee farmers prop up the lodge bar, and war veterans and youth militia loyal to Mugabe hover outside the gates.
In going back Rogers discovers the "big story" he had traveled the world in search of is taking place in his parents' back yard.
Evoking elements of The Tender Bar and Absurdistan, The Last Resort is an inspiring coming-of-age tale about home, love, hope, responsibility and redemption. An edgy roller-coaster adventure, it is also a deeply moving story about how to survive a corrupt Third World dictatorship with a little innovation, humor, bribery, and brothel management. [src.: facebook group]

UPDATE: check the interview with Douglas Rogers in "The New Yorker"! (17 Dec 2009)