Trips That Went South

In this quirky collection of unraveled travels, no U-turn is left unturned. There’s trench foot, tick bite fever, supersonic diarrhea, hurricanes, runaway buses and thieving baboons. From being clapped out of a bar (not in a good way) in Santorini to a captain’s request to be removed from a catamaran in the Seychelles, Trips That Went South is an unmatchable romp around the world with a live sex show, mud massages and some spelunking with a convict in between.

Prepare for a high-octane joy ride—all sorts of rides actually. There are hot air balloons, camels and a very different version of the Northern Lights as seen in Amsterdam. Jules Torti recounts her ambitious, naive and hairy experiences of volunteering in the soggy Costa Rica jungle as well as working with the Jane Goodall Institute in Uganda and at a chimpanzee sanctuary in the Congo. If you’ve wondered how trips can go sideways, Torti vulnerably shares her misadventure archives from Ecuador, Colombia, Thailand, Newfoundland, Belize, Iceland and China.

The author revisits daunting days on Croatia’s harrowing Camino Krk, an evacuation in Iceland’s Vatnajökull National Park, a jungle helicopter rescue and an unusual twist on ping-pong in Bangkok. She may be grounded by her parents after sharing some of these never-told-before accounts.

Her travels over the last three decades have continually convinced several friends and family of places they NEVER want to go. Luckily she married a woman who was game for destinations that are on the no-fly list of most. Chasing birds, buses and dreams from an early age, Trips That Went South is a mash-up of travel wish lists, intestinal parasites, Camino pilgrimages, international volunteer gigs, desert breakdowns, gangplanks, tourist rip-offs, chimpanzees and beer foam premonitions. Along the meandering way, Torti digests a questionable menu of guinea pig, crocodile pizza, goat testicles, camel stew, piranha and fermented shark. Let’s not forget pad Thai in Alexandra, Egypt, with a Christmas carol soundtrack in September! The search for her next strange pizza, primate, penthouse or pint is infinite.

Torti believes that once-in-a-lifetime trips should definitely happen twice and her first curated collection of travel stories is an open-heart dissection of the rigours, rewards and random encounters that can only unfold in jungles and mountains far from anything familiar and comfortable.