Unlost

From the author of the award-winning The Buddha and the Bee 

Life doesn’t come with a roadmap... And this is not a guidebook

CORY MORTENSEN rode his bike from Chaska, Minnesota, to California. The experience ultimately changed his perspective on how life could be lived. So, rather than returning home after his adventure—back to the life unwanted—and equipped with absolutely no plan and nothing tying him down, he makes a simple phone call to quit his career and hitchhike south along the Pacific Coast Highway. Destination unknown. Sounds like a pretty good idea.

One minute, I’m sitting in a cubicle, and the next, I’m haggling over a room in the Andes in a location of the world I never even knew existed.

Where does a guy go when he has no place to be? Passport, tent, sleeping bag, and a favorite pair of Chaco sandals—enough gear for meandering from the Mexican border to the southern tip of South America, right?

Humor ■ Insight ■ Adventure ■ Gratitude ■ Peace

Forty-hour bus rides, Mayan Ruins, five-dollar tattoos, mountain biking down the Road of Death, para-gliding the mountains of Mérida, trekking the Patagonian Andes. Spectacular sights, strange foods, unfamiliar smells, interesting people—and what would a trip like this be without a little dynamite?