Product Description

DEAD MEN DON'T LEAVE TIPS: Adventures X Africa is an edge of your seat tale about a couple’s seven-month, 10,000-mile "dream" odyssey–overland across Africa from top-to-tip. Against their better judgment, two confirmed independent travelers join a bewildering band of companions and clueless guides. As their dream of crossing Africa becomes a nightmare, they set off across the continent alone. And that makes all the difference.

Join them as they meet mountain gorillas face to face. Melt down during a blistering Saharan breakdown. Hunt dik-dik with Pygmies. Climb Africa’s highest mountain. Feel the raw power of the Serengeti. Hop the "gun-run" through a civil war. Rush down thundering Class V Zambezi rapids and dive into South Africa’s cauldron of turmoil.

This engaging story is filled with a zest for life, travel and unbridled adventure. It offers a humorous, sometimes anguished, yet always candid look at taking the road less traveled–across a land little fathomed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #302916 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 276 pages

Review
"A captivating tale filled with a passion for travel, vivid and exciting, as well as funny, and real." -- Reiko Matsumoto TravelWriter MarketLetter, September 2006

"A delight and a puzzlement...the delight being the tale itself...It is, as many trips go, the end that really whomps you..." -- Marilis Hornidge, Book Reviewer, The Courier-Gazette, Maine, August 2006

"Terrific read from first page to last-and would make a popular addition to any personal or community library travel section." -- Midwest Book Review, March 2006

"The most eclectic collection of travelers I've ever read about. I couldn't stop laughing. Highly recommended. (smile)" -- James Damico, Wanderingtheworld.com

"This is a masterful crossroads of characters, exotic places, history and human drama in a rig that never stalls..." -- Richard Bangs, author The Lost River and Mystery of the Nile/adventurer/executive producer Yahoo Media Group

"Travel book that transcends its genre to become a transformative journey of the soul into a disparate and gorgeously challenging culture..." -- C. W. Gortner, author of The Secret Lion and The Last Queen

"…a magical story laced with humor and tragedy…it brings Africa to readers on an intimate level not found elsewhere." -- Andrew F. O’Hara, author of The Swan: Tales of the Sacramento Valley/journalist

"…an adventure journal only the craziest traveler would take as a guide. But we can dream, can’t we?" (5 shakas) -- Joseph W. Bean, Book Reviewer, Maui Weekly(Hawaii), October 26, 2005

From the Publisher
DEAD MEN DON'T LEAVE TIPS: Adventures X Africa by Brandon Wilson is, at first glance, a story about a couple’s seven month, 10,000-mile, 17-country trans-African odyssey – overland across Africa from Morocco to Cape Town. After their organized overland safari turns into a nightmare, they set off across Africa alone.

More an adventure story than a scholastic treatise on Africa, this book takes readers across Africa as these "everyman" travelers photo-stalk mountain gorillas, breakdown in the Sahara for two weeks, hunt with Pygmies, climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, explore the Serengeti, hop a "gun-run" through Mozambique's civil war, raft Zambezi rapids and arrive in South Africa as Soweto erupts into violence.

It is humorous, anguished and brutally real. Nothing is painted in the typical writer's wide brush extolling one beautiful sunset or another glorious setting. This book exposes the humor and frustration of crossing a land where the rules change daily. The reader experiences first-hand the ups and downs of independent travel in a land still little-known by Western audiences.

On the other hand, it also lends a human face to the continent that is vastly different from the one portrayed in the news or non-profit commercials.

From the award-winning author of YAK BUTTER BLUES: A Tibetan Trek of Faith.

From the Inside Flap
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO FOLLOW YOUR DREAM?

Quite a bit, if your "dream" involves crossing Africa. That’s what the author and his wife discover when they set off on a seven-month, 10,000-mile overland journey from Morocco to Cape Town. As dedicated independent travelers, they’d traveled around the world. But was a trans-African odyssey too much for even them?

Who do you "cadeau?" How do you create tantalizing dishes from wriggling grubs? Or avoid having a spear tossed through your camera?

With trepidation, they join an English do-it-yourself overland safari. Flung into the midst of twenty-one odd companions, they’re shocked to discover that their "guides" know Africa as well as the dark side of the moon.

After their dream turns into a nightmare, they decide to set off across Africa–alone. And that makes all the difference.

DEAD MEN DON'T LEAVE TIPS is a captivating tale filled with a passion for travel, spontaneity and unbridled adventure. Vivid and exciting, its impact is immediate and lasting.

It is often funny, sometimes anguished, yet always real. Nothing is held back or glossed-over: from the hustle and hassle of the souk to shady dealings in blackmarket alleys, from the frustration of border extortion to the thrill of sandmatting across the Sahara eight feet at a time.

DEAD MEN DON'T LEAVE TIPS: Adventures X Africa is written with a keen eye for detail. It takes you onto the crazed roads of Africa and into the lives and hearts of its people.

Wilson takes you along across this vast continent, through the everyday ups and downs, showing once again that the real joy of travel is the moment to moment thrill of getting there.

Customer Reviews

Africa brought to life
Dead Men Don't Leave Tips
by Brandon Wilson

I've read travel stories by Brandon Wilson before, so knew I'd be entertained, amused and instructed. His story of a crossing of Africa did not disappoint me.
Leaving domesticity in Hawaii, Brandon and his brand new wife Cheryl joined what proved to be the do it yourself safari from hell. From the hot dry hell of the Sahara to the humid hell of the jungle, through starving villages and squalid cities, we follow a picturesque group of pilgrims. Brandon's writing makes the reader feel the heat, the discomfort and even despair, while giving one laugh after another. Living it was difficult. Reading about it isn't. If I wrote about the travails of camping beside a swamp infested with malaria-bearing mosquitoes, I might bring tears to your eyes, and have you grit your teeth. Brandon gives you a belly laugh instead.
Not that it was all misery. It is clear that Brandon and Cheryl felt well rewarded for their endurance. His passages about wildlife, scenery and friendly people sometimes approach the poetic.
Like all good writing, this book does a lot more than entertain. One would expect to learn about Africa -- its people, animals, landscape -- from a travel book, but, without lecturing Brandon gets us to see social conditions; the gap between rich and poor, urban and starving. Racially, he is colorblind, with respect for all people, while sometimes justly indignant about cruel or exploitative behavior.
The language is always lively and entertaining, clear and lucid with amusing little word-paintings: `a Swiss cheese swatch of dirt road;' `we were finally waved on our way-and after only four hours;' and `It was a sleepy place-so quiet you could almost hear trouble simmering.'
Brandon is a writer with the eye of an artist, a basic decency and social conscience that in another book made him the champion of the suppressed Tibetan people. He has the humor of a cartoonist and the old fashioned ability to tell a good story. I strongly recommend this one to you.

About the reviewer: Dr Bob Rich is a multiple award-winning writer and professional editor http://bobswriting.com/

A rare journey into the heart of Africa
Brandon Wilson's DEAD MEN DON'T LEAVE TIPS is that rare event: a travel book that transcends its genre to become a transformative journey of the soul into a disparate and gorgeously challenging culture, as seen through the eyes of a man determined to experience life as it is, rather than as it's presented to us. Eschewing the typical tourist African safari, Wilson and his travel companion, along with a host of madcap dysfunctional fellow travelers, embark on a wildly funny, poignant, and at times terrifying, trip across the African continent. From the rapacious markets of Marrakesh to the stunning breadth of the Sahara and haunting domains of the Masai, Wilson brings to life in lucid prose the smells, sights, and sensations of being a foreigner in a strange land, who yearns for communion with the world he has set out to explore.
This is travel writing at its most sublime, a paean to Africa in all her contradictory beauty, and a tribute to the resiliancy of those who travel beyond boundaries not only in search of meaning, but also of understanding.

Entertaining and Enjoyable
This was my first experience reading about the travel adventures written by Brandon Wilson and I have to say it was one enjoyable one.
We are taken with Brandon and Cheryl Wilson as they travel the length of Africa. We start our adventure right from the beginning and all the woes that transpire in preparation and sometimes some of the unfortunate, like Brandon catching the flu. Once aboard for the true beginning of their adventure they are grouped with nearly two dozen people who in themselves are a story ready to be written.
Then our couple goes it on their own and it is here that they truly get into the meat of their journey, meeting natives, experiencing incredible landmarks and truly tasting of Africa.
This work is very well-written, is brimming with giggles and down to earth reality and the photos bring the reality of the read to life. I enjoyed this one; I believe you will too.