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Bruce Parry meets some llamas on his latest adventure Yesterday I mentioned how Bruce Parry is my hero - he is also partly the inspiration behind Dr Midas who is a TV adventurer. You may also remember that my second book is set in Peru and the Amazon - well my best friend has just told me that Bruce is currently filming there for a new BBC series. I loved his Tribe programmes especially as they give you a true look at the places he visits not a 'holiday-show' version - so I'll definitely be tuning in. In the meantime I can follow his journey on the BBC's website including blogs, interactive map and pictures. There's a great picture of him with some llamas wearing traditional dress (above) and another one where he's learning to be a cowboy. Hopefully I might also pick up some more tips to keep my writing authentic until I'm lucky enough to visit South America myself (I'm saving up for Madagascar first!) As I've mentioned before the original Dr Midas was a traditional crazy professor type - like this ... (Fantastic drawing by one of my animation heroes Lou Romano - check out more of his superb pictures at www.louromano.blogspot.com) He was definitely the stereotypical old-fashioned explorer - well as Bruce Parry, Ray Mears and Bear Grylls have shown that style is definitely gone - and there's definitely more effort made to dress appropriately to local custom. (I love that line in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - "Brody's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the grail already." Cut to Marcus Brody in Middle East bazaar wearing white suit and hat: "Uhhh, does anyone here speak English?") * If you're a Bruce fan too check out www.bbc.co.uk/amazon. The new Amazon six-part series is due to be broadcast on the BBC in the Autumn.

Bruce Parry meets some llamas on his latest adventure Yesterday I mentioned how Bruce Parry is my hero - he is also partly the inspiration behind Dr Midas who is a TV adventurer. You may also remember that my second book is set in Peru and the Amazon - well my best friend has just told me that Bruce is currently filming there for a new BBC series. I loved his Tribe programmes especially as they give you a true look at the places he visits not a 'holiday-show' version - so I'll definitely be tuning in. In the meantime I can follow his journey on the BBC's website including blogs, interactive map and pictures. There's a great picture of him with some llamas wearing traditional dress (above) and another one where he's learning to be a cowboy. Hopefully I might also pick up some more tips to keep my writing authentic until I'm lucky enough to visit South America myself (I'm saving up for Madagascar first!) As I've mentioned before the original Dr Midas was a traditional crazy professor type - like this ... (Fantastic drawing by one of my animation heroes Lou Romano - check out more of his superb pictures at www.louromano.blogspot.com) He was definitely the stereotypical old-fashioned explorer - well as Bruce Parry, Ray Mears and Bear Grylls have shown that style is definitely gone - and there's definitely more effort made to dress appropriately to local custom. (I love that line in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - "Brody's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the grail already." Cut to Marcus Brody in Middle East bazaar wearing white suit and hat: "Uhhh, does anyone here speak English?") * If you're a Bruce fan too check out www.bbc.co.uk/amazon. The new Amazon six-part series is due to be broadcast on the BBC in the Autumn.

Ethan Rarick’s Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West is an intimate portrait of the Donner Party and their unimaginable ordeal in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Of course, what most of us remember about the Donner Party are the gruesome tails of cannibalism. In the interview below with radio host Dorian Devins, Rarick discusses the cannibalism aspect of the story. Hear other Rarick clips here.

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I first learned the Donner Party story as a teenager hiking over Donner Pass and their harrowing fight for survival has always stayed with me. So you can imagine how excited I was to read Ethan Rarick’s Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West. Rarick provides an intimate portrait of the Donner Party and their unimaginable ordeal in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We were lucky enough to have radio host Dorian Devins interview Rarick and two clips from that interview appear below. Stay tuned in the upcoming weeks for more audio clips from Rarick’s interview.

“The Basic Story”

(transcription after the jump.) (more…)

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