Travel/Adventure Archives - Page 5 of 7

Dove

by Robin Lee Graham

Fine adventure story from the sixties about a young man who determined to circumnavigate the world in his 24-foot sailboat. He was only sixteen when he set out on his solo journey. Well, not exactly solo. He had the company of a variety of ship\’s cats throughout the trip, met and fell in love with a girl, later married her and she accompanied him on the sailboat for different legs of the journey. She also spent a lot of time jumping from place to place around the world to meet him at different ports. In fact, a large part of the book is their love story. There are lots of mishaps, storms, explorations in foreign places and other adventures. And loneliness. He talks a lot about feeling alone on the high seas in that boat with perhaps just a cat or two for company. The journey ended up taking Robin five years, and he didn\’t exactly make it all the way- if I remember correctly, he set out from Hawaii and finished up in California… But still it\’s an incredible (true) story one that I enjoyed much. Especially the survivalist bits and about how he did things \”the hard way\” because there was no other way back then! He didn\’t have GPS or even a two-way radio but navigated using the stars and various time-honored instruments. It\’s a book I\’d like to revisit someday and I\’m rather surprised my library system doesn\’t have a single copy!

The book came out after the National Geographic serialized his adventures. I\’d like to see those articles, I can\’t recall now if I\’ve read them or not (my parents had a large collection of National Geographics I used to go through as a kid… but more looking for pictures of animals than reading stuff!) Robin\’s story has also been made into a film- has anyone seen that? what did you think?

Rating: 3/5 …….. 199 pages, 1972

a few more opinions:
Musings
Craftsman Character
Hans is Great

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Bios / Memoirs, Past Reads, Travel/Adventure

Edges of the Earth

by Richard Leo

This is an adventure story about a man who leaves his New York city apartment and takes his girlfriend into the Alaskan wilderness. Enamoured of the wide open spaces, he throws himself into the difficulties of living in the bush with little reserve. It\’s readily apparent that he\’s clueless from the start at how to make a living out there; I was skeptical at first how long they would last and kept expecting some big disaster. Living without electricity, running water, or a neighbor for miles, Leo exulted in the solitude and closeness to wild things, but his girlfriend (who became his wife) couldn\’t handle the rough living and deprivations. Eventually (not much of a spoiler) they separated and she remained in town while their son lived mostly with him. I was pretty astonished at this man\’s tenacity and ingenuity. He built a log cabin by himself, learned to run a dog team, tried climbing mountains. Rather slipshod most of the time, but did it regardless. My favorite part of the book was reading about how his son grew up close to nature. And I was waiting to see how long it would take him to hold out, living on beans and rice (imported) because he didn\’t have the skills or desire to kill game for food. In many ways this story reminded me a lot of Christopher McCandless, Into the Wild. Foolhardy and ignorant perhaps, but determined to make a go at living his dream, and this guy actually did it.

I realized while writing this post that I\’ve read his later book, Way Out Here, where you can see how well he adapted to living in the wilderness and how his son grew up in the cabin. I think personally I liked the second book better.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 384 pages, 1991

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

Born Wild

the Extraordinary Story of One Man\’s Passion for Africa

by Tony Fitzjohn

This book caught my eye sitting on a library display shelf: a man embracing a lion, now that looks like the kind of book I like! It\’s a memoir of Tony Fitzjohn\’s several decades spent working in Africa to help reintroduce wildlife. He started out as an assistant to the famous George Adamson (Born Free) and worked at his side for about two decades before moving on to establish wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in Kenya and Tanzania. The efforts they made were astonishing; living in remote, harsh conditions, dealing with corrupt government, political unrest, violence, poachers, and all kinds of difficulties. For every moment actually working with the animals it seems they had to spend hours struggling with other, mundane or exasperating tasks. I\’m sure that\’s pretty accurate, as he writes later in the book about spending ten years setting up infrastructure and manpower before they could bring the first black rhino into Tanzania. It was a bit tedious for me, because I\’d rather read about the animals themselves- their personalities, behavior, anecdotes about actually working with them- and aside from the first few chapters, the parts about animals are just scattered here and there throughout the book. Most of it is about the efforts in all other aspects that were necessary to deal with living in the area, getting proper permits and dealing with locals and officials in order to work with the wildlife. It kind of makes your head swim all the names Fitzjohn mentions, but at the same time he is a good writer, and you can tell he was determined to give everyone credit, who helped him along the way. It just shows the reader how many people are involved in saving wildlife. And the work they did was amazing- rehabilitating numerous lions and leopards into living fully wild lives, as well as elephants, rhinos and wild dogs. These people were incredibly brave and hardworking- they were mauled by lions, barely escaping with their lives, and quite a few staff members get killed. Some of the animals they loved and successfully rehabilitated also get killed by poachers, so be aware there are very sad moments. The ending is very upbeat, as the author had achieved his goals and continued working hard to forward the cause of African\’s wildlife as well as helping and educating its people.

Phew. It was a hard read to finish, as I found the constant litany of names and events a bit tiresome. Fitzjohn is a good writer, or I never would have made it all the way through. It was interesting to come across a few names I recognized- of course Joy and George Adamson (sad to read of their deaths) also Christian the lion! If you\’ve read of him, or seen the clips on Youtube, know that the story of his reintroduction to the wild is in the first few chapters here. Fitzjohn also writes about meeting Roberto Canessa, who was one of the survivors of the plane crash recounted in Alive. There\’s really lots of incredible stories here; the man has led an amazing life and does wonderful work for wildlife; I just wish more of the book had actually been about the animals themselves.

Rating: 2/5 …….. 318 pages, 2010

more opinions:
Rae\’s Book Reviews
Opions of a Wolf

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Nature, Travel/Adventure

Endurance

Shackleton\’s Incredible Voyage
by Alfred Lansing

In 1914 Earnest Shackleton and a crew of 28 men left England on a discovery expedition, intending to cross the Antarctic continent with sled dogs. Their ship became trapped in pack ice, then slowly crushed and sunk by pressure of the moving ice. The men were left stranded, setting up camp on a thick ice floe and hoping for a chance to reach land. Their original plan was to use lifeboats to reach land where they could travel with the help of the dogs. But long before they escaped the ice they were forced to shoot the dogs, at first because of short supplies, and later simply to eat them. I\’d heard of Shackleton\’s voyage before, but this is the first account I\’ve read of it. I knew it was about an expedition that got stranded and made it back to civilization by trekking long miles and enduring extreme conditions, but for some reason I had in my head a picture of them trudging overland to their destination. In fact, they scrambled between ice floes in their small boats, seeking mostly shelter from the raging elements, often stuck on one floe for months at a time because pack ice gave them no escape. Some times they had plenty to eat when seals and penguins were nearby. Warm weather was a threat, not a boon, as it would melt the floe underneath them and half-melted floating pieces of ice made the water too dangerous to navigate. At other times they suffered terribly from starvation, fatigue, bitter cold, frostbite, etc. In the end (no spoiler as you know well some of them made it out alive; the book is based on and quotes from the crew members\’ diaries and the ship logs) they made it to a far-flung island which offered scant shelter, and Shackleton made a final desperate move to get by boat to the nearest whaling port, in South Georgia. Even when stretching the limits of exhaustion he made it there, they landed on the opposite side of the island from the whaling station, and had to climb over a glacier to finally reach help. This is without much food or proper gear of any kind.

Endurance is a compelling read. I thought the beginning a bit dull, as it goes into lots of detail on the characters of each of the men, but later you see how they respond differently to their situation, to being in close quarters with one another for years in harsh conditions, and it is amazing what they went through. I can\’t remember the last time a book made me cry, but I had tears in my eyes when I read the final pages, of Shackleton\’s reception at the whaling station. I did wish for a bit of a postscript, telling me how each of the men fared afterwards (how did Blackboro\’s feet fare?) but that\’s really a minor complaint. If you like adventure stories, be sure to look for this one!

Rating: 4/5 …… 282 pages, 1959

More opinions at:
The Seated View
The Badger\’s Set
Shelf Love

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Current Reads, Nonfiction (general), Travel/Adventure

Two Years Before the Mast

by Richard Henry Dana

In 1834 Richard Henry Dana, a Harvard college student, left his studies due to an illness which had caused \”weakness of the eyes\” and went to sea on a merchant ship hoping to improve his health. For two years he worked as a common sailor, sleeping in the cramped forecastle with the other seamen, climbing about the rigging, taking the hard knocks and suffering inclement weather. He kept a journal, and after returning home wrote up a narrative of his experiences and observations. Not only is it a rousing adventure story of life at sea, but also a fascinating depiction of a way of life long gone past. There are interesting descriptions of all sorts of characters Dana meets and of the California coast when it was still part of Mexico, a sparsely populated wild and fertile country mostly open land with a few adobe houses, missions or forts (presidios) here and there. One of the more interesting segments of the book takes place when he gets left on shore there engaged in preparing hides for the ship to pick up (its main trade was in cattle hides and tallow). Although the technical terms were difficult to pick through (mostly describing parts of the rigging and actions done thereon), the daily descriptions of the intricate skill of sailing were fascinating. Dana served as a crew member on two different ships, under different captains (belonging to the same company) so he describes the contrasts between how the captains ran their ships. Also every time they ran into another ship there was a sort of contest between them to show off sailing skills, and the sailors would look critically upon how the other ship was manned and rigged, if it was kept clean and tidy, etc.

A lot of the book describes how difficult and hard a sailor\’s life was- there was pretty much no sympathy for sickness or injury, the men were fed mainly on salted or fresh beef (I wasn\’t surprised to see that at the end of the voyage one man came down with scurvy), in rainy weather their clothes were constantly wet, their bunks were in darkness and damp, the captain had complete rule (once Dana witnessed a terrible flogging), etc. After its publication, Two Years Before the Mast became widely popular, and Dana was instrumental in working to better the lot of sailors. In my copy, there are two afterwards written by Dana; one describes his efforts to help sailors, the other describes his return to California after twenty-four years, and what had happened in that time to some of his shipmates and the rigs he sailed on. I read an older edition, and I think I\’m going to look for a newer one to replace it, hopefully one that has a glossary of unfamiliar terms, a diagram of ship\’s rigging, and a map of their travels (which would all be helpful in better appreciating the text).

It might interest all you booklovers to know that Dana himself, and many of his shipmates, were also avid readers! Of course they rarely had time to just sit and read but when there were lulls in the work they would trade books from the bottom of their chests. When they ran into other ships they often swapped books with the other sailors. Sometimes Dana was desperate to find something to read, and found himself engrossed in books he never would have tried before- like a romance novel! When he described his reaction to a particularly good read, it was so familiar:

\”… each watch below… I spent in the same manner, until I had finished my book. I shall never forget the enjoyment I derived from it. To come across anything with literary merit was so unusual that this was a feast to me. The brilliancy of the book, the succession of capital hits, and the lively and characteristic sketches, kept me in a constant state of pleasing sensations.\”

This was my last read for the Random challenge. I\’ve had it on my shelf some time, because I recall my father once telling me how good it was. Such an interesting read!

Rating: 4/5 …….. 320 pages, 1840

More opinions at:
Bibliographing

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

Chasing Kangaroos

a Continent, a Scientist and a Search for the World\’s Most Extraordinary Creature
by Tim Flannery

I first saw this title on shelf at a bookstore, and was intrigued because I\’d never read anything about kangaroos before. I thought at first the subtitle was a bit puzzling: how hard can it be to find a kangaroo? aren\’t they numerous enough to be considered pests in certain parts of Australia? Well, I found out two reasons: many kinds of mid-sized kangaroos are gone forever, or very close to extinction. Also, Flannery wasn\’t neccessarily looking for live kangaroos. He was searching for fossils, to answer questions about how kangaroos evolved and what caused mass extinctions of ice-age giants like the short-faced kangaroo.

So the book is partly a travel adventure crisscrossing Australia, from deserts and rugged landscapes to ancient rivers that once bordered rain forests and islands that hold pockets of surviving marsupials now extinct on the mainland. Encounters with quirky characters and elderly Aborigines who sometimes remember those vanished animals clearly. Its other main focus is Flannery\’s work as a palaeontologist, from a young graduate student volunteering to help clean fossils in museums to conducting his own research. And then there\’s the kangaroos. I had no idea how diverse they were before. Or the peculiarities of their reproductive strategies and feeding habits (all quite bizzare). One drawback was the inclusion of many Australian slang terms I had to look up. A short glossary, or a suggestion in the text, would have helped this unfamiliar reader. Overall the book is informative, interesting, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. I\’m game to read some more Flannery. Any suggestions on what I should try next?

Rating: 3/5 …….. 258 pages, 2004

More opinions at:
Book Lust Forever
Rick Librarian

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Nature, Travel/Adventure

Enrique\’s Journey

the Story of a Boy\’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother
by Sonia Nazario

This story follows one young boy from Honduras who made eight attempts to reach his mother in South Carolina, in a harrowing trip mostly on the top of freight trains, over 12,000 miles. He endured hunger and the risk of horrific injury, faced robbers, gangsters and corrupt police intent on thwarting his path or stealing what little he had. All in attempt to find his mother. She had left him in Honduras when he was only five years old, deciding it would be better for him to live with relatives and be well-provided for, than to stay together and continue in abject poverty, unable to afford schooling costs or regular meals. She didn\’t want to see her children grow up ignorant and digging through the local dump for food. But her son felt abandoned, his loneliness eroding over the years into anger and resentment. When he finally did make it to the US, the family reunion wasn\’t quite as he\’d imagined, the rift during their years of separation had only widened, and troubles continued. Two parts of this book nearly made me cry- seeing how generous some people in poor regions were, giving food, water and clothing to those traveling on the trains, even when they had so little themselves. And reading about how Enrique\’s family continued to disintegrate even after his journey ended; it was very sad to see that despite the pain he felt from his mother leaving him behind, his girlfriend eventually saw no choice but to leave their own young daughter in Honduras when she came to the US as well. Written by a reporter who visited many of the places Enrique traveled through on his journey, and from interviews with other Latinos- both migrants and those who stayed at home, as well as caseworkers, priests, law enforcers and others involved in the issues, Enrique\’s Journey is a heartbreaking revelation of all the suffering and agonizing decisions faced by illegal immigrants, particularly those trying to get from poor Central American countries into the United States. It throws a lot of light on the desperation that drives people to attempt the trip, the many who don\’t make it, the privations felt even by those who do. The story did feel a bit dispassionate to me, written in a clipped, factual style, but the impact was great nonetheless.

I got my copy of this book from The Book Thing (free!) and read it for the Non-Fiction Five Challenge and the 2010 TBR Challenge.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 300 pages, 2006

More opinions at:
Helen\’s Book Blog
Lotus Reads
Latino Journalism

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

Where the Lilies Bloom

by Vera and Bill Cleaver

This title has sounded familiar to me since childhood, and caught my eye at a library sale. I have a vague memory of my mother reading it to us sisters at one time, when we were past bedtime stories but still gathered to listen to novels in the evening. It turns out I recalled almost nothing of the story, so it was a whole new experience to read it again.

Where the Lilies Bloom is about a poor family of four children who live in the backwoods of a secluded Appalachian valley. Their mother having already died, and their father terminally ill, fourteen-year-old Mary Call takes on the responsibility to keep her siblings together. She makes a promise to her dying father never to accept charity, then stubbornly and proudly struggles to find ways to make ends meet when left without parents. Keeping their father\’s death a secret, the children avoid questioning neighbors, refuse help, try to finagle ownership of the house they live in and the land around it from the landlord, and finally take to \”wildcrafting\”, gathering herbs and roots in the woods for a meager income. But when winter arrives with deep snow, the children find themselves woefully unprepared.

This was a pretty good book. The plight of the children and their determination to manage by themselves against all odds wrings your heart. The characters are pretty believable, and the ending took me by surprise. I didn\’t see evidence written into the story either that Devola was simple in the head, as her sister supposed, or that she was smarter than she appeared, as others came to believe. I guess that\’s because we see it all from Mary Call\’s viewpoint, and she was just accepting what her parents had told her, but I wish there\’d been more about that for the reader to gather between the lines.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 213 pages, 1969

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Re-reads, Travel/Adventure, Young Adult

Fatu-Hiva

Back to Nature
by Thor Heyerdahl

This is just as wonderful as the other two Heyerdahl books I\’ve read. It\’s about the year he spent on a remote island in the Marquesas, as a young man. With his new wife Liv, Thor wanted to escape modern civilization and see if he could live purely as a part of nature- no modern conveniences, little clothing, eating off the land, etc. For a while they found paradise on Fatu-Hiva where the local natives allowed them to live on a plot of land in the jungle that used to be the cultivated garden of an island king. At first their time on the island was blissful, they reveled in the natural beauty and fresh fruit, collected specimens of local insects and archeological finds for Thor\’s studies back home and learned about the island\’s cultural history from the locals. More and more Thor became convinced that the islands had been first populated by seafaring people from Peru, a theory he later tested (described in the other books).

But the blissful period did not last long. Bugs ate the very structure of their house, mosquitoes drove them crazy, and when the rainy season came sores in their legs got infected and threatened never to heal. They had to escape to a nearby island where a doctor lived to get treatment, but determined to come back. Their second stay on the island was shorter; misunderstandings with the locals plus their dread of communicable diseases rampant in the village (elephantiasis and leprosy) drove them to try living in the highlands (where there was little food) then later to cross the island to the sparsely populated east side, where they lived with an old man, the last surviving cannibal (fascinating chapter!) Eventually things went wrong there, too, and they ended up staying on a small isolated beach in a cave while waiting for a ship to pick them up off the island for good.

Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature is full of adventure, musings on the nature of man, descriptions of the island\’s wild beauty, speculations into the origins of its inhabitants, and thoughts on environmental issues. One of the most sobering chapters is about an island called Motane (now known as Mohotani) they visited, which had once been full of jungle but after man brought goats and then abandoned the island, the introduced animals so overran the land that they destroyed the habitat and it was reduced to bare rock, withered scrub, and starving goats. In the end, the Heyerdahls realized they could not live apart from civilization, and the fire was sparked to set Thor on his next set of adventures. Wonderful read.

More opinions at:
Riverbend Journal
anyone else?

Rating: 4/5 …….. 276 pages, 1974

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Current Reads, Nonfiction (general), Travel/Adventure

Paddle to the Amazon

by Don Starkell

When I was growing up, my family did lots of camping and we went on many canoe trips down river stretches, some quiet and peaceful with glimpses of wildlife, others challenging and exciting with rushing whitewater. There were a number of books on canoeing (both instructional and inspiring) that sat on the family bookshelves, and this is one that got read enough times it began to fall apart. It\’s just that fantastic.

Paddle to the Amazon is about a father and son team that traveled from Winnipeg, Canada down the Mississippi river and through ocean waters to the mouth of the Amazon river in Brazil, by the power of their own arms in a canoe. On the long journey -over 12,000 miles- they suffered from sunburn, salt sores, illness and sometimes even faced starvation. They traversed numerous foreign countries- sometimes welcomed and assisted by friendly strangers, other times facing thievery or arrest by hostile natives (often exacerbated by the language barrier). Then there\’s the dangers of weather, not to mention wild animals. In particular I still recall vivid scenes with crocodiles, huge snakes and fearsome insects, even though it\’s been years since I read the book! It\’s amazing what hardships the Starkells went through to complete their journey, especially in the face of setbacks when they forgot (or lost) crucial supplies and gear. It\’s one of those stories that makes you catch your breath, amazed at the frequent scrapes with danger, astonished at what some people will put themselves through, and cheering when they finally reach their goal. A great adventure story.

Rating: 4/5 320 pages, 1987

More opinions at:
Hooser\’s Blook
Helen Foster James
anyone else?

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Bios / Memoirs, Past Reads, Travel/Adventure

Tag: Travel/Adventure

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