Product Description

This is not your grandfather's idea of a travel book.Swimming to Angola is a gregarious look at how to help improve Third World conditions, and make it back home safely from 96 countries -- with all limbs hopefully attached in the right places.It tells what to do if challenged by machine gun-waving security forces, or if Gypsies are getting a little too close for comfort. Readers can learn how to drive from the USA down to South America, or even the length of the African continent.Tips include how to manage local currency fluctuations to get the best values, while avoiding a myriad of scams that are designed to separate travelers from their resources. The destinations in these pages have rarely, if ever, made it to those high-gloss volumes of global travel literature. And for a good -- or at least logical -- reason: most people in so-called 'advanced' countries looking for 'exotic' locales to spend time in, normally wouldn't want to go here. These are places that we might consider deep in poverty and hopelessness, where civil wars rage, where dictators confiscate land for their own use, where babies starve, and where travel itself is crimped by men in battle fatigues carrying automatic rifles. It also highlights real danger, moments when less luck or less wise on-the-spot decisions might have been life threatening. However, this is an occupational hazard for any hardy world traveler with a yen to veer off the well-beaten path. Traveling light in the pocketbook, in fact, is one of the rules of this book -- the reason being that you don't want to stand out and become a target, especially in the Third World. Being Western looking enough as it is, you don't need a sign around the neck reading: "Free money for everybody, right here."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #869641 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-25
• Released on: 2007-07-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 308 pages

About the Author
Christopher Scott Blin is an international management consultant who graduated with a Business Management degree before going overseas for further studies in Munich, Germany and Latina University in Panama. Having visited 96 countries around the world, he has had work assignments in 12 of those. Highlights include playing basketball in the leagues of the United Kingdom, as well as Australia, where he enjoys dual citizenship. Christopher regularly gives keynote speaking addresses on the subject: "Surviving an overseas assignment in a developing country." This is his first published book on the subject.

Customer Reviews

Almost like being there
So, I was in Old Town, San Diego, just minding my own business, you see, when this tall, gregarious, self-confident guy strolled toward me with a book in his hand. I knew he was going to try and sell it to me. And I am very glad he did. Christopher Blin writes just the way he presented himself that day -- easy going, straightforward, light-hearted, but confident and determined.

Before I bought the book, I was thinking, "Okay, how can I politely get out of this? Maybe my wife and daughter will finish their shopping quickly." But it turned out that the subject matter of the book is something that interests me, which is traveling the world, especially Africa. Occasionally I'll visit LonelyPlanet.com just to see if the world has gotten any less hostile, so I can go. But I probably never will.

Luckily for me, Blin has gone, and he's visited many places. Along the way he made friends, and helped others, and always left a little part of himself to try and improve the lives of those he met. He writes about his travels in such a way that you feel you're with him. In fact, now that I know him better by his writing, I'd like to go back to Old Town and sit and talk with him for a while, but that was a few weeks ago and he's no doubt moved on by now.

If you have any wanderlust in you at all, or just enjoy reading about someone who does, I think you'll enjoy this book.