Vagabonding Down the Andes Being the Narrative of a Journey, Chiefly Afoot, From Panama to Buenos Aires [Paperback]

Harry A. Franck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2005

1917. Illustrated with numerous photographs by the Author. Contents: Up to Bogota; The Cloistered City; From Bogota Over the Quindio; Along the Cauca Valley; Down the Andes to Quito; The City of the Equator; Down Volcano Avenue; Through Southern Ecuador; The Wilds of Northern Peru; Approaching Inca Land; Drawbacks of the Trail; The Roof of Peru; Round About the Peruvian Capital; Overland Toward Cuzco; The Route of the Conquistadores; The City of the Sun; A Forgotten City of the Andes; The Collasuyu, or Upper Peru; On Foot Across Tropical Bolivia; Life in the Bolivian Wilderness; Skirting the Gran Chaco; Southward Through Guarani Land.

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing, LLC (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1417902574
• ISBN-13: 978-1417902576
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,267,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Detailed Info From Another Era, March 5, 2006

By 

JM (NYC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Vagabonding Down the Andes Being the Narrative of a Journey, Chiefly Afoot, From Panama to Buenos Aires (Paperback)

What a huge book. Six hundred and twelve pages of trudging up and down the Andes, scavenging for food, attempting to talk with the natives, and figuring how to carry his photographic equipment. How lucky for us that, at the very least, cameras can now be carried without the benefit of a mule.

Harry A. Franck has written many of these tomes and although they are not the travel books of today, full of witty stories and slights of culture, they are remarkably readable. It will take you awhile however.

Vagabonding is full of minutia about life throughout the Andes was around the early 1900s. There are mentions of bribes, mosquitoes, heat and cold, and well he's sort of a curmudgeon with a knack for detail. Although he makes a point about how walking makes him invisible to the upper classes and how he wants to see the real people, he tends to make a fair amount of stereotypical or even derogatory remarks about the indigenous people. His writing is typical of his time, before the concept of PC and should be taken with a grain of salt. It is important to try to read a book in the context of the time it was written and to not apply your own, current belief systems to it.

There is a lot to be gleaned from this book, especially about geography, culture, food, people and I can only hope that my accounts give some similar rendition in the modern setting.