Turn Right at Machu Picchu

Author: Mark Adams

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 1101535407

Category: Travel

Page: 352

View: 1824


THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING TRAVEL MEMOIR What happens when an unadventurous adventure writer tries to re-create the original expedition to Machu Picchu? In 1911, Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and “discovered” Machu Picchu. While history has recast Bingham as a villain who stole both priceless artifacts and credit for finding the great archeological site, Mark Adams set out to retrace the explorer’s perilous path in search of the truth—except he’d written about adventure far more than he’d actually lived it. In fact, he’d never even slept in a tent. Turn Right at Machu Picchu is Adams’ fascinating and funny account of his journey through some of the world’s most majestic, historic, and remote landscapes guided only by a hard-as-nails Australian survivalist and one nagging question: Just what was Machu Picchu?

Summary of Mark Adams's Turn Right at Machu Picchu

Author: Everest Media,

Publisher: Everest Media LLC

ISBN: 1669387739

Category: Travel

Page: 58

View: 6556


Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 John Leivers, a guide in Cusco, had been recommended to me. He had started coming to Cusco twenty years ago when he was working as an extreme-trip leader, driving fearless globe-trotters across four continents in an open-back truck. He had seen interest in serious adventure dwindle. People wanted hotels, cafés, and the Internet. #2 Hiram Bingham III was the explorer who discovered Machu Picchu. He was a Yale University history lecturer who happened to be passing through Cusco in 1909 when he learned of a four-hundred-year-old unsolved mystery. He thought the experts were wrong, and he scoured obscure texts and maps for clues to its location. #3 I wanted to retrace Bingham’s route through the Andes on the way to discovering Machu Picchu. #4 The Inca Trail is a popular trek in Peru that leads to Machu Picchu. It is not very far, but it is a bit steep. It is a must-do if you want to get a sense of Peru’s natural beauty.

Meet Me in Atlantis

Author: Mark Adams

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 0698186214

Category: Travel

Page: 336

View: 2086


The New York Times Bestselling Travel Memoir! The author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu travels the globe in search of the world’s most famous lost city. “Adventurous, inquisitive and mirthful, Mark Adams gamely sifts through the eons of rumor, science, and lore to find a place that, in the end, seems startlingly real indeed.”—Hampton Sides A few years ago, Mark Adams made a strange discovery: Far from alien conspiracy theories and other pop culture myths, everything we know about the legendary lost city of Atlantis comes from the work of one man, the Greek philosopher Plato. Stranger still: Adams learned there is an entire global sub-culture of amateur explorers who are still actively and obsessively searching for this sunken city, based entirely on Plato’s detailed clues. What Adams didn’t realize was that Atlantis is kind of like a virus—and he’d been exposed. In Meet Me in Atlantis, Adams racks up frequent-flier miles tracking down these Atlantis obsessives, trying to determine why they believe it's possible to find the world's most famous lost city—and whether any of their theories could prove or disprove its existence. The result is a classic quest that takes readers to fascinating locations to meet irresistible characters; and a deep, often humorous look at the human longing to rediscover a lost world.

Tip of the Iceberg

Author: Mark Adams

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 1101985119

Category: Travel

Page: 336

View: 8722


**The National Bestseller** From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu, a fascinating, wild, and wonder-filled journey into Alaska, America's last frontier In 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman organized a most unusual summer voyage to the wilds of Alaska: He converted a steamship into a luxury "floating university," populated by some of America's best and brightest scientists and writers, including the anti-capitalist eco-prophet John Muir. Those aboard encountered a land of immeasurable beauty and impending environmental calamity. More than a hundred years later, Alaska is still America's most sublime wilderness, both the lure that draws one million tourists annually on Inside Passage cruises and as a natural resources larder waiting to be raided. As ever, it remains a magnet for weirdos and dreamers. Armed with Dramamine and an industrial-strength mosquito net, Mark Adams sets out to retrace the 1899 expedition. Traveling town to town by water, Adams ventures three thousand miles north through Wrangell, Juneau, and Glacier Bay, then continues west into the colder and stranger regions of the Aleutians and the Arctic Circle. Along the way, he encounters dozens of unusual characters (and a couple of very hungry bears) and investigates how lessons learned in 1899 might relate to Alaska's current struggles in adapting to the pressures of a changing climate and world.

Mother of God

Author: Paul Rosolie

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 0062259547

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 336

View: 8445


For fans of The Lost City of Z, Walking the Amazon, and Turn Right at Machu Picchu comes naturalist and explorer Paul Rosolie’s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon—a tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered land and presents an impassioned call to save it. In the Madre de Dios—Mother of God—region of Peru, where the Amazon River begins its massive flow, the Andean Mountain cloud forests fall into lowland Amazon Rainforest, creating the most biodiversity-rich place on the planet. In January 2006, when he was just a restless eighteen-year-old hungry for adventure, Paul Rosolie embarked on a journey to the west Amazon that would transform his life. Venturing alone into some of the most inaccessible reaches of the jungle, he encountered giant snakes, floating forests, isolated tribes untouched by outsiders, prowling jaguars, orphaned baby anteaters, poachers in the black market trade in endangered species, and much more. Yet today, the primordial forests of the Madre de Dios are in danger from developers, oil giants, and gold miners eager to exploit its natural resources. In Mother of God, this explorer and conservationist relives his amazing odyssey exploring the heart of this wildest place on earth. When he began delving deeper in his search for the secret Eden, spending extended periods in isolated solitude, he found things he never imagined could exist. “Alone and miniscule against a titanic landscape I have seen the depths of the Amazon, the guts of the jungle where no men go, Rosolie writes. “But as the legendary explorer Percy Fawcett warned, ‘the few remaining unknown places of the world exact a price for their secrets.’” Illustrated with 16 pages of color photos.

Trespassing Across America

Author: Ken Ilgunas

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 0698198387

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 288

View: 5195


Winner of the Nebraska Center for the Book Award, Travel • A Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award Notable Book • Honoree of the Society of Midland Authors Annual Literary Award for Biography/Memoir Now that President Donald Trump has revived the Keystone XL pipeline that was rejected by former President Obama, Trespassing Across America is the book to help us understand the kaleidoscopic significance of the project. Told with sincerity, humor, and wit, Ilgunas's story is both a fascinating account of one man’s remarkable journey along the pipeline's potential path and a meditation on climate change, the beauty of the natural world, and the extremes to which we can push ourselves—both physically and mentally. It started as a far-fetched idea—to hike the entire length of the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline. But in the months that followed, it grew into something more for Ken Ilgunas. It became an irresistible adventure—an opportunity not only to draw attention to global warming but also to explore his personal limits. So in September 2012, he strapped on his backpack, stuck out his thumb on the interstate just north of Denver, and hitchhiked 1,500 miles to the Alberta tar sands. Once there, he turned around and began his 1,700-mile trek to the XL’s endpoint on the Gulf Coast of Texas, a journey he would complete entirely on foot, walking almost exclusively across private property. Both a travel memoir and a reflection on climate change, Trespassing Across America is filled with colorful characters, harrowing physical trials, and strange encounters with the weather, terrain, and animals of America’s plains. A tribute to the Great Plains and the people who live there, Ilgunas’s memoir grapples with difficult questions about our place in the world: What is our personal responsibility as stewards of the land? As members of a rapidly warming planet? As mere individuals up against something as powerful as the fossil fuel industry? Ultimately, Trespassing Across America is a call to embrace the belief that a life lived not half wild is a life only half lived. It's the perfect travelers gift for fans of Free Solo and Turn Right at Machu Picchu.