Miss Adventures: A Tale of Ignoring Life Advice While Backpacking Around South America

by Amy Baker

Having announced her plans to quit her job and backpack around South America, humourist and gonzo journalist Amy Baker found herself on the receiving end of a whole bunch of over-the-top and seemingly unnecessary advice. Baker shrugged it all off, of course--that is, until she ran into trouble.

After falling into a crevasse, swimming in crocodile-infested waters, dodging cocaine con artists, and encountering handsome soothsayers, Baker soon starts to wonder if her mum, boss, and Carol from reception really were onto something. Weighing up their advice against that of known ‘Clever People’ like Tina Fey, Salvador Dalí, and Mother Teresa, Baker establishes once and for all who it might actually pay to listen to.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir, Ebooks

290 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 9, 2017

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having had an idea to quit her job and go backpacking around South America, Amy started to tell friends and family of her intentions. What she wasn’t quite expecting was the vast amount of advice that was proffered to her on what to see, where to go, what to do, and most frequently what not to do. Advice that was perhaps a little unnecessary and probably irrelevant too. So after her boss had told her that there was no money in travel writing and that she would come to regret it, she replied: ‘I’m going to do it anyway’.

So begins Amy’s full on adventure around a number of countries in South America, beginning right in the deep end, the Bolivian jungle. Here she manages to scare herself several times a day, swim in crocodile infested waters, and encounters spiders that she didn’t know could grow that large. Having just survived the jungle, climbing a mountain seemed like a good idea, didn’t it? She was joined by friends on various parts of the trip, as well as meeting loads of new people most of whom were friendly and occasionally those that weren’t.

All the way through the book Amy considers that advice that she had been given. She realised that some of the advice that had been provided was sound, and some, shall we say was less than helpful… Weighing up that provided by friends, against some from experts Amy slowly concludes who provides accurate guidance and when it should be listened to. Amy is a competent writer and the book is scattered with genuine laugh out loud moments, so much so I was getting odd looks when reading this at lunchtime and sniggering. If you like books written by Tony Hawkes, then this is right up your street.

I do hope though that her mother hasn’t read this book!

[Daren · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok, so firstly what this book is: an easily read, humorous look at a thirty year old English girls travels in South America. Amy is one of those over-sharing people - you know, there is usually one at your work who shares the details of her life with everyone - and this book is a little the same - funny most of the time, but often the laughing is at that sharing girl, not always with her.
At thirty there is pressure to have 'got that travelling and hooking up with strings of guys' out of your system, have some sort of career plan, probably to have had some sort of long term relationship. So when Amy makes plans to leave her job and head off to South America, there is plenty of concern and raised eyebrows, and of course lots of helpful advice.

The way the book rolls out, is each chapter has an advice quotation from one of Amy's helpful advisers, and a quotation from an expert (including Salvador Dali, Ranulph Fiennes, Taylor Swift, Howard Marks and Jennifer Aniston - so somewhat eclectic), an advances summary of what Amy learns in the chapter. It is kind of quirky and fun, but there are continuity quirks where some of the things she learns don't appear in the following pages, which is odd. Strangely the same thing with photos on the inside cover - of the five photos, only one is featured in the book?

Anyway, Amy makes her way from Argentina to Bolivia, to Peru, to Ecuador briefly, and onto Colombia. She spends more time in Colombia than the other locations. She travels with friends around half the time, meeting up with them in route, and tries to eke out lessons from each chapter. The lessons are often considered learned, then immediately the following chapter Amy is back into the problem with gusto. Seems she is particularly bad at relationship lessons, as she readily admits over an over in the course of the book...

So any real lessons to learn from the book? Not really, unless you have absolutely no idea to begin with.

Worth a read? Yep, as long as you are looking for light and funny.

3.5 stars, rounded down.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bailing on this one 2/3 of the way through. I tried to get past the author's immaturity, giving her credit for going through with more adventurous stuff. However, when she gets to Colombia, it's drugs, drugs, drugs. No thanks!

[Emilie Marshall]

This book was being displayed at the library, and in attempts to shake up my usually snobbish list of literary classics and beat-gen paperbacks, I picked it up.

This book is why I can't stand memoirs. Reading it was like listening to an over-exuberant, self-involved chick tell you how interesting and fun they are; the kind that preach about "living life your way" or "being in the moment" as though they've gained some elusive and unique bit of wisdom and everyone she touches will be blessed with a small bit of it.

What it unimpressive about her travels in South America is that there seemed to be very little risk involved. She stayed in hostels, had plans and money, had close friends join her for periods of time all along the way, therefore never losing her connection to her preconcieved identity. There is just nothing earth-shaking or ground-breaking here in terms of self-discovery or a larger perspective on humanity and society. God, what a pretentious asshole I sound like.

I suppose the bitterness comes from a place of jealousy. When I travel there are very few certainties, a lot of risk, and a lot of discomfort. I've been broke in Nanjing and planned to sleep in the train station and not eat for a couple days. I've slept in closets that cost less than a latte, gone days without speaking English or talking to a person who knows me. I've travelled alone for months with only one outfit, washing my socks and underwear in bathroom sinks. I always tell glossy-eyed people who think the traveling life is so cool not to romanticize it. There are sacrifices of comfort, luxury, and security that go with it. The loneliness can be unbelievably overwhelming at times. The despair, the dirtiness, the doubts... the extreme highs of the traveling life must be accompanied by extreme lows if anything good or of value should come from it. Miss Baker's hangovers, bouts of crankiness, or feeling shy in a hostel common room are too insignificant to count as "travel writing" for me and I'm bewildered as to how this woman got it published. Do people actually want to read the literary form of a hot chick's vacation posts on instagram?

Anyways, sorry for going so deep on the hate-train, this book was easy to read and could be entertaining to some. Everyone deserves to have their story told and I'm just being a judgmental asshole.

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a light-hearted romp through South America from a backpacker perspective with an entertaining author and I enjoyed it. I liked her often cack-handed attempts to understand and learn from her experiences and her honesty in sharing her feelings. My difficulty with giving this book a glowing report is I thought there was too much emphasis on getting drunk/high and hooking up (or not) with hot men. Whilst I appreciate that this was a big part of her trip, and was often funny to read about for me it wasn't that interesting. The backpacking experience was well described, sometimes funny, sometimes smelly, sometimes downright revolting (the bunk-bed wanker) and yet a friendly environment. There was some good travel information in the book and reading her experiences on her jungle trip and mountain trip would make anyone think twice about signing themselves up for these as unprepared as she was. I wondered why she missed out some of the things she did which she sometimes mentioned in the chapter intro, or were the pictures included on the inside covers and yet included pages and pages describing one night where she got overly high on weed. But her book her choices and I feel churlish mentioning these criticisms actually because I did enjoy reading this book.

[Marilyn Gardner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very funny in some parts and boring and predictable in others. The lessons on the yoga retreat I thought were the highlights.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately this one just wasn't for me. Amy Baker and I's approach to life is just to different, and anecdotes that she (and I'm sure many others) find hilarious I found at best vaguely amusing and at worst disgusting and/or scary. My own trip to South America is fast approaching, and as someone in the same age bracket, I can only hope that it's an extremely different trip to Amy's!

A minor comment, but I also found the section introductions and the photos included on the flyleaves a little random. 4/6 photos included were of incidents that were never discussed during the book (or maybe were momentarily touched upon and I missed them). Each country-focused section had a list of bullets of lessons she had learnt in that country, and again, many of these bullets were never expanded upon or had no connection to the actual content of the section. As a book of vignettes it felt a little disjointed throughout, and this only added to that feeling.

[Marianna Milkis-Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Check out my review of this book on Pink Pangea: http://www.pinkpangea.com/2017/06/mis...

[Squishy Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to reading this book as I'm an avid backpacker and I haven't yet made it to South America. However, instead of interesting adventures and odd cultural knowledge, I read about things this woman could have just done when staying in Brixton. I'm sure the cocaine and weed aren't as good in the UK, but she could have had the same forgetful drug induced encounters and romances without forking out for a plane ticket. Let's not forget that she isn't a girl, but a woman who is eight years out of university buying drugs from a dealer on the street; falling for men left, right and center; falling ill without being able to take care of herself; climbing dangerous mountains without regard to the risks to herself or others... And she wrote a book about it, which is a great accomplishment... But seems to fall a little flat and shallow. The focus is on the stupid things, rather than the real journey that we read about in the last chapter. In sad that I didn't get to hear the rest of the journey that included the heartache of trying to find publishers and the dread of editing. Hopefully, Amy keeps going and gets better at writing the hard feelings she was avoiding the entire trip.

[Andrew Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific book – a funny and insightful account of backpacking around South America

Having done a similar trip many moons ago, this book piqued my interest and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Amy Baker is an excellent writer and there is a lovely balance of introspection, witty observations about travelling/modern life, and self-deprecating humour throughout. The structure – chapters based around the (often questionable) advice received from people back home and famous faces - works well, too.

From the author’s excitement of first arriving in Buenos Ares to spectacularly leaving her comfort zone by camping in the Amazon rainforest and stomping up a mountain in Bolivia while suffering from altitude sickness, her trip is full of highs and lows, good and bad decisions, friendships made, and various cameos from the wide range of weird (often very weird) and wonderful people you meet in hostels. For anyone fortunate enough to have been backpacking, it is highly relatable and often laugh-out-loud funny.

I enjoyed this book from start to finish and would highly recommend it. Will look forward to seeing what the author does next.

[Isabel Losada · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an unpretentious, lighthearted and fun travel romp with Amy on her trip around South America. If you're looking for deep this ain't it. "I don't do deep" - Amy Baker. On the other hand there is a certain unassuming depth to the way that Amy throws herself at life and her determination to enjoy every second. That itself is an i.nspiration. I do my reading first thing in the morning and I was about to be interviewed by Amy for her podcast - so as a means of getting to know my hostesss I read this every morning for 30 minutes when I woke up. I very much looked forward to finding out what she's do on the next leg of her adventures. I certainly wish that I'd done that wonderful (mostly) solo trip around South America. So if you're interested in learning about South America or just enjoy a light holiday read then this will be a fun read for you. I like happy books. And this is one of them.

[Madeleine Penny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book, I would highly recommend it. It is very funny, honest, and sometimes excruciating.

There are no softening of the edges, she takes on mountains she isn't fit enough to climb, sleeps with men she really shouldn't, hangs out with some tedious hippies, it's funny. We've either all been there, or has a mate who has. It's one of those life defining journeys, that are life defining because loads of really good stuff happens and a lot of crap stuff too, all retold in hilarious detail.

By the end of the book the author is your mate, and you end up reading the section at the end featuring all the people she wants to thank because you don't want it to end.

If you are looking for a good description of South America, a laugh, a hero you want to root for, and a conversational unputdownable book. This is it.

[Andreia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amy Baker is hilarious. This memoir made me laugh out loud more times than I can count. It's genuine and fresh and entertaining. Although I couldn't make myself care about her crushes or relate to her willingness to get drunk or high at every opportunity, reading about her experiences as a female backpacker in South America was really interesting. I don't think anything she did was inspirational because she's so British in the way she travelled - sorry, British people - but most of her adventures were amazing - my favourite being her climbing of Huayna Potosi. I wish she had written about hiking the Inca Trail. In fact, I wish she had focused more on the trip itself and the food she was eating and the places she was seeing rather than the hunky dudes she was sleeping with. I think in the end she wished she had done that too so I forgive her.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was far more readable than I anticipated, and I was entertained about 80% of the time. About 10% of the time I was mildly bored, and the other 10% I was so annoyed by the author's self-indulgence and idiocy that I would have given up had that portion of the story been in the first third of the book. There's far less emphasis on the actual travel itself and the sights she sees and far too much on the drugs she takes and the hooking up (or not) she does with men. I was a bit disappointed at the end when the big thing Ms. Baker learns is that she needs to be more comfortable with herself and care less about what others think of her. Um, duh? It took you seven months of backpacking around South America to learn that? Okaaay,....

Overall, though, I'm giving this book 3 stars, which to GR means "I liked it" because for the majority of the time I was entertained.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I really enjoyed the writing style and found it really humorous. I zoomed through it. Some chapters I enjoyed more than others, particularly ones that focused on experiences related to the place of travel, e.g. climbing a mountain.

The ones I didn't like quite so much were those focused on drugs/men that could have taken place anywhere and felt rinse repeat. It was particularly frustrating when the opening to a place mentioned some really fun sounding experiences of lessons learned as bullets that then weren't referenced at all! Similarly some of the photos used inside weren't actually spoken about! Talk to me about a donkey ride, not a ride on a different kind of ass please!

But overall I liked it, even if the lessons learned were a tad repetitive.

[Sio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trying to live vicariously due to lockdown ruining travel plans lead me to this book. Although some of the descriptions helped you imagine you were there it was hard to think you were there with anyone other than a self obsessed gap yar kid (not a 30 year old woman) I have no issues with the sleeping around just the inherent lack of self awareness. The constant objectifying of men was also quite off putting. The explorations were very focussed on backpacker culture rather than any south American culture. Having said that lockdown has also made looking in on social interaction pretty nice and I read it to the end

[giingerbooknerdd · Rating 2 out of 5]

A difficult read... 70% of each chapter is Amy describing herself going through some sort of physical or mental torment while travelling (she often appears unprepared), it is written in a lighthearted tone. The end of each chapter she gives an in-depth synopsis of what she has ‘learnt’ from said experience… she would then go on to revert these lessons learnt in the next chapter? I found it boring and shocking at times…. Using the toilet 11 times a day and not questioning it for a whole month? And her lesson learned is the ‘importance of looking after yourself and nourishing yourself sensibly’ ….?
I didn’t like the format of the book and I found the content corny and a bit juvenile

[Susan Zabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was hoping Amy Baker had written more travel books! This was a fun read and Amy Baker seems to understand human nature extremely well. Loved the way she developed the personalities around her. Would have liked to hear more about her travels alone.

Picked up this book in the book swap area at a coffee shop in Cabo San Lucas Mexico. It was sticky with jam and well loved. I’m definitely going to pass this one to a friend!

[Natasha Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious, witty and extremely relatable. Last year I spent 4 months in South America and I could relate to so many of the incidents that Amy got herself into. Despite this, I was still sat on the tube mouthing ‘OH MY GOD’ as I read through her account of her time in South America! The book is full of lots of great life advice too. A joyful read!

[Gina Oviedo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A humorous travelogue of one lady's adventure through South America, trying to find herself while simultaneously eating her way through every country. Quite an amusing read as I sit here in Brazil.

[Lisette Sheehy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found many of tales relate-able and HILARIOUS, i laughed so hard on public transport that it should have been embarrassing. If you have a sense of humour enjoy and easy read and appreciate honest, real life accounts, this book is a must. Loved it

[LAnne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun and unpretentious piece of travel writing. I really enjoyed this book. Although some points are a little dragged out this travel memoir is entertaining and also informative too. Perfect for those who are down to earth and are looking for an unstuffy travel book.

[Alicia Grasby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the second half of the book more than the first but it was still just okay overall. Yes there are some life lessons learned but the author complains a lot (about things she chose to do!) and there's a lot of time spent discussing being drunk/high which didn't really interest me.

[Chris Scrivener · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was an honest and fun account of Amy's travels in South America.

[Heidi Schoephoerster · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm always up for a good anecdotal travel book. If you're into that whole finding yourself while seeing the world thing, this book is for you.

[Hanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to goooo now

[Lara Lillibridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite travel memoirs! Baker is honest, funny, and I feel like I learned something.

[Natalie Katharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book, I haven’t laughed so much at a book in ages.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspiring but kinda badly written

[Sarah Handley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick & easy read. Lighthearted & funny. Thoroughly enjoyed.