Tortillas to Totems: Motorcycling Mexico, the USA & Canada – Side tracked by the Unexpected

Sam Manicom’s dynamic fourth book is an enticing yet frequently challenging motorcycle journey across the dramatic landscapes of Mexico, the United States and Canada. Sam’s partner Birgit is no longer a novice motorcyclist – riding through southern Africa and South America turned her into a rider capable of facing any challenge. But Sam was worried.

As they arrived into North America they had been travelling around the world by motorcycle for six years and he was beginning to think that North America was going to be easy; too easy in fact. Were all the challenges of travel in the developing world countries going to be missing? Sam couldn’t have been more wrong.

Samuel Johnson wrote, ‘The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them how they are.’ After all, aren’t these some of the main reasons for going travelling? To experience as many different things and ways of life as possible? To discover new and wonderful things, but also to have preconceived ideas challenged.

This true life story has more twists and turns than a Rocky Mountain Pass, and more surprises than anyone could expect. As it did them, at times it could challenge you too. Woven into this surprising story are canyons, cowboys, idyllic beaches, bears, mountains, Californian Vineyards, gun-toting policemen with grudges, glaciers, exploding volcanoes, dodgy border crossings and some of the most stunning open roads that a traveller could ever wish to see.