Adventures of a Continental Drifter: An Around-the-World Excursion into Weirdness, Danger, Lust, and the Perils of Street Food - Hardcover

Elliott Hester

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312312415 ISBN 13: 9780312312411

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2005

Synopsis

In October 2002, Elliott Hester sold his car, abandoned his apartment, and took off alone on a trip around the world, during which he drifted to over fifty destinations. Elliott's tales about his travels range from the bizarre to the hilarious to the flat-out shocking. Travel with him as he:

· Chases off transvestites in the South Pacific
· Gets drunk on Estonian moonshine at the maker's eightieth birthday party
· Impersonates Samuel L. Jackson at the 38th International Film Festival in the Czech Republic
· Ponders the Finnish tradition of sprinting from steamy sauna to plunge into the frigid Baltic Sea--naked!
· And much more.

Only an around-the-world excursion could produce such outlandish, hair-raising, hysterical adventures. And only Elliott Hester could make such vivid observations and write such vibrant insights about life---and people---on the road.

About this title

About the Author

Bestselling author Elliott Hester is an award-winning travel writer. He writes “Continental Drifter,” a syndicated travel column carried nationwide, and has no fixed address.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Adventures of a Continental Drifter

“Elliot Hester tells funny and sometimes harrowing stories. Wrapped up in the core of each tale is some bit of illumination: about other countries and other people, about travelers and dreams. The man has no permanent home and travels incessantly, a world citizen adrift in a cross-cultural maze, frequently bewildered but curiously at ‘home’ in the oddest places. He’s one of my travel heroes.”
---Tim Cahill, author of Lost in My Own Backyard and Jaguars Ripped My Flesh

“Continental Drifter is travel beyond the brochure---a real look at the places we go but stripped of the hype and pretty pictures. What remains, under Elliott Hester’s careful telling, are stories that are far more compelling than the sanitized-for-our-protection versions of reality that often pass for travel writing. This is the real deal, refreshing but no less enticing.”
---Catharine Hamm, travel editor, Los Angeles Times

“The unexpurgated version of Elliott Hester’s around-the-world journey, with all the good parts we couldn’t print in the newspaper.”
---Randy Curwen, travel editor, Chicago Tribune

“When it comes to travel, and for that matter, life itself, one of the worst five letter words is…plans. Elliott Hester is the personification of travel without plans … wild adventures, great stories, and some important lessons for even the most sophisticated travelers.”
---Peter Greenberg, travel editor, NBC’s Today Show

From the Inside Flap

Fans of humorist Dave Barry or travel writer Bill Bryson should not miss this one.
---Booklist on Plane Insanity

One year. Six continents. Twenty-two countries. Endless stories to tell

I sat on a bench in the courtyard [of the Taj Mahal], admiring the world s loveliest building, basking in its luminescent glow, when suddenly there was a rumbling from inside. Not in the interior chamber where Mumtaz Mahal s body lay, but in the deep, dark recesses of my warped digestive system. The runs.
---from Delhi Belly

In October 2002, Elliott Hester sold his car, abandoned his apartment, and took off alone on a trip around the world, during which he drifted to over fifty destinations. Elliott s tales about his travels range from the bizarre to the hilarious to the flat-out shocking. Travel with him as he:

· Chases off transvestites in the South Pacific
· Gets drunk on Estonian moonshine at the maker s eightieth birthday party
· Impersonates Samuel L. Jackson at the 38th International Film Festival in the Czech Republic
· Ponders the Finnish tradition of sprinting from steamy sauna to plunge into the frigid Baltic Sea naked!
· And much more.

Only an around-the-world excursion could produce such outlandish, hair-raising, hysterical adventures. And only Elliott Hester could make such vivid observations and write such vibrant insights about life---and people---on the road.

Reviews

After suffering cuts in pay and benefits as a flight attendant after 9/11, Hester turned in his wings and became a travel writer. This follow-up to his industry tell-all, Plane Insanity, is based on his syndicated column, "Continental Drifter," and details his experiences traveling across six continents in the space of a year, spending just $60 a day. Although Hester manages to land on couches as often as he rents hotel rooms, this isn't a guide to frugal travel tricks. Instead, it's a romp with an adventurer who rarely becomes jaded or travel weary, and has a way of falling into amusing situations. For example, Hester's affection for Kangol hats has people mistaking him for Samuel L. Jackson at a film festival in eastern Europe; true to his jaunty nature, he doesn't correct them. Hester's writing is lively, and he keeps his observations light. However, the travelogue does have serious moments, as when the author describes being stared at unrelentingly in Argentina because, he says, 97% of the inhabitants are of white European origin. But the seriousness, like Hester's stay in each country, never lasts long.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

At the end of 2001, the author, a flight attendant with 20 years' experience (and author of the witty and revealing Plane Insanity, 2002), realized he was fed up, burnt out, at his wits' end. The events of September 11 had devastated the airline industry, and when his own company offered leaves of absence to its employees, he took them up on it. Then he sold nearly everything he owned and bought himself a ticket around the world. This sparkling book recounts his exploits as a "continental drifter" (also the name of his syndicated newspaper column, which he files from far-flung locales). It's an over-the-top travelogue that's both informative (what to do when diarrhea strikes at the Taj Mahal) and very funny (how to impersonate Samuel Jackson at the Czech International Film Festival). This is perfect for armchair travelers, but it can also be used as a blueprint for readers with a yen for a little continental drifting of their own. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312312415
• ISBN 13: 9780312312411
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 301