Eight Feet in the Andes: Travels with a Donkey from Ecuador to Cuzco [Hardcover]

Dervla Murphy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 1983

An account of the author's travels in Peru with her nine-year-old daughter and a mule, from the border with Ecuador in the north to Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, over 1300 miles to the south.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[Murphy] is the best kind of traveler: observant, high-spirited, and impervious to discomfort. -- The Sunday Telegraph --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Dervla Murphy is one of the very best loved of travel writers. She was born in County Waterford and since 1964 has been regularly publishing accounts of her journeys - by bicycle and on foot -- in the remoter areas of four continents. She has also written about the problems of Northern Ireland, the hazards of nuclear power, and race relations in Britain. The Times Literary Supplement called her 'an admirable woman -- she has a romantic soul and a keen eye'.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 274 pages
• Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd; First Edition edition (November 3, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0719540836
• ISBN-13: 978-0719540837
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,403,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of fun but caveat lector, June 27, 2008

By 

Jerika (9th circle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eight Feet in the Andes: Travels with a Mule in Unknown Peru (Paperback)

Dervla Murphy always delivers good travel stories, liberally dosed with history lessons. Despite all the decriptions of hardship, privation and poverty, Eight Feet in the Andes is lyrically written and exciting: makes you want to trek through the Andes eating stringy goat meat, which is saying something for the author's talent. However, she can overplay that "Look at me, I'm an eccentric gringo lady" hand a bit too often. (She also never seems to have mastered enough Spanish to know that she's using the masculine form of the word.)

The book is marred in places where Murphy can't keep her Western judgments or personal prejudices from coloring her descriptions. Sure, it's her perspective, but seeing her list homosexuality alongside violence and drunkenness as examples of "Indian" depravity is a little startling. Especially in the second half, there are repeated references to the "stupidity" and "low IQ" of the "Indians," and the "intellectual dishonesty" of the entire country. Murphy dismisses the value of literacy in the Sierra when she discovers magazine vendors selling soft porn, calls Peru "a nation of hypocrites," etc. It's funny how she condemns the 16th-century Spanish accounts of Indians as beasts and savages, yet makes similar observations herself and complains that Peruvians having the nerve to drive their trucks through the Peruvian mountains is a kind of "desecration." It's also not clear how she feels able to gauge the natives' intelligence when she herself makes it clear that she has never bothered to learn more than a few words of Quechua. It's definitely worth a read, but brace yourself for some of the more self-righteously arrogant spots in an otherwise broad-minded account.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eight feet in the Andes, February 12, 2000

By 

sarah murphy (Northamptonshire, Enlgand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eight Feet in the Andes (Hardcover)

Wonderful, uncomplicated and witty descriptions of the environment, culture, peoples and journey. Amazing courage to do what had to be done to get through. Made me want to travel mysel, instead of earning large amounts of money in an office. Truly inspirational.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone travelling to Peru!, September 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Eight Feet in the Andes (Paperback)

Although the thought of reading about Dervla Murphy's trip throught the Peruvian Andes did not greatly interest me because of the potential for boring day-by-day narration, I found Murphy's description and narration of her trip very enlightening. Murphy deftly ties together her story of her trip with historical facts and cultural observations of Peru. Although I did not always agree with Murphy's opinion of the Peruvian people, she gave me food for thought during my trip to Peru.