Brendan Reade is the latest addition to my list of people I most admire. He has been constantly traveling since 1978. Here's the kind of guy Brendan is, he doesn't just visit South America, he continues to the British Antarctic Territory.

We decided to walk to the shore, but only managed to get semi lost in a shanty town and sensing some danger decided to beat a hasty retreat. All the while I was encouraged and amazed at his tales of adventure.

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Some of the best fish in the world comes from Mauritanian waters. It's too bad they sold the fishing rights to the European Union though. Tony is a UK citizen motorcycling his way through Africa and he swears that the best fish he has ever had comes from here. I decided to test his endorsement and had the whole grilled corbine. Sure enough it was excellent. Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm, I managed to lodge a fish bone in my throat.

I stayed up the whole night worrying about the possible medical ramifications of this. The saddest part is that I was in an environment that was by most definitions very dreamy and romantic. I was outside, lying awake, looking at the stars, and the moon was directly overhead. Clouds were being quickly pulled across it's face like a veil, on then off. The wind was nice and gentle, begging me softly to succumb to the call of the sandman. Even with the vast resource of the Sahara, the sandman is sometimes fruitless in his mission.

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For the record if you find yourself suffering a similar fish bone misadventure, here's how to solve it. Bite a chunk of banana, roll it around in your mouth to remove the sharp edges and swallow it whole. Assuming you don't asphyxiate on the banana, that should dispatch the bone to it's (your rear) end.

Note: Why you have to buy the book.
Mauritania yielded some of the richest stories yet including...
-Snak Shak Iraq, a restaurant ran by a former Iraqi P.O.W.
-Restaurant scams (a high art in Mauritania)