Mike Plummer

This compulsive book focuses upon those often white-knuckle events when an unconventional choice is made in an otherwise classical career path. Back in 1981, Mike found himself at a crossroads in life. His current path, that of a college lecturer, led to a secure career steadily climbing the ladder of promotion. The other, more risky path, would send him all the way to the East coast of South America, leaving safety, security and everything he knew, behind. Blindly blundering from one hair-raising experience to another, this memoir describes Mike's travels with delightfully wry humour and significant personal detail. He expected an adventure, but never did he expect to experience the shock of having a sub-machine gun shoved into his stomach, the acute terror of wandering around the outskirts of a favela in Rio, late at night, or even the exotic delights of a wild love affair with a Bahian native woman who couldn't speak English. Woven into the fabric of the story are over 250 weird and wonderful true stories, myths and legends, including: the town that outlawed death; the city that elected a Rhinoceros onto its council; Laguna Abeata, South America's equivalent to the Bermuda Triangle; Man eating trees; the Jesus lizard that runs on water and how Leco warriors in the Bolivian jungle defeated a band of marauding Spanish conquistadors with a large anaconda and some leaves. Travelling on his own, Mike seldom knew where he would be sleeping. He lived with and amongst the locals, and saw life as it really was in its most rudimentary form: the dirt, stench and horrors of existing in a third world country where over sixty million people lived in squalor, without proper sanitation, clean water or housing. The book lays bare how such circumstances forced a major reappraisal of his life and valuation of the things that most of us take for granted.