"I'm going to Brazil by bus and train, a boat or two." Tijuana, Batopilas, Tegucigalpa, Medellin, Iquitos: just some of the exotic, strange -- and at times downright dangerous -- destinations passed through on this overland odyssey through Americas central and south, a savage journey that takes Mark from Los Angeles to the Amazon -- through Mexico and Guatemala and Honduras, through Nicaragua and Costa Rica and Panama, through Colombia and Ecuador and Peru. These are places that few make it to. And for good reason, as Mark finds out: a failed revolution, a spewing volcano, a drawer of cocaine. On his ride into the dark south of the Americas -- his hedonistic search for, well... what? -- he has a surreal succession of encounters with an assortment of characters normally avoided -- Scientologists and shamans and narcos -- and risks his freedom, his sanity, his life. By the end, he at last finds a point to it all: he goes far to find home.