‘At 16,500 miles it was the world’s longest road: a road on which travellers faced being kidnapped and murdered by Colombian drug barons, buried under Peruvian avalanches, drowned by the Guatemalan rainy season, fleeced by eight-year-old Ecuadorean border touts, driven mad by blackflies in the Yukon, eaten by Alaskan grizzlies and, worst of all, limited to a glass of Chardonnay a day in California. The Pan-American Highway.
It sounded brilliant.
The next day, I went out to buy every book that I could find on it. And found that there weren’t any.
Then it’s about time I wrote one, I thought.’


