Breakfast for Alligators: Quests, Showdowns, and Revelations in the Americas

Offering vignettes from across the American hemisphere, omnivorous travel writer DuFord (Is There a Hole in the Boat? Tales of Travel in Panama Without a Car) weaves a lattice of narratives into a semi-cohesive picture of the Americas from various locales between Cape Columbia and Cape Horn. Moving deftly across the hemisphere—tasting cassareep syrup in Guyana, getting his haircut in Panama City, submarining off the coast of Honduras, and taking agrotourist bicycle trips in Quebec, among other adventures—DuFord offers impressions of South, Central, and North America in all their stunning diversity, contradictions, and complexity. Chronicling his gastronomic and geographic adventures, DuFord’s playful and pop-culture peppered prose (describing Nicaragua’s Caballito as “the country’s White Castle of hooch”) makes for succulent travel writing. His amiable introduction of the various wayfarers and residents he encounters along the way add palatable texture to the locales he chronicles. He also finds space to develop his and his wife Melanie’s own budding romance, which offers an opportunity to spin together tales of travel in both love and life. DuFord is not afraid to take the reader to places previously unknown. (BookLife)