Backpacked

Catherine prefers bath robes to bed-bugs, lattes to lizards and mini-bars to malaria. So why is she going backpacking?

Travel memoir | Released September 2011

Synopsis:

Catherine isn’t the backpacking type. Working for one of the world’s biggest hotel chains, she and her employee discount have become accustomed to complimentary bath robes, 24-hour room service and Egyptian cotton sheets. As for holidays, Catherine likes places that encourage lying—lying on the beach, by the pool, in bed…

She’s been on what feels like one long holiday in Florida when her fearless best friend, Sheelagh, announces plans to backpack across Central America. With Catherine’s US visa about to expire, her having no desire to return home to Ireland just yet and her common sense, evidently, on a day off, she agrees to go along.

After all, how bad can this backpacking thing be?

Um… very bad, actually. Catherine soon finds herself showering with the threat of electrocution, living with mutant cockroaches, sleeping on wooden planks, suffering from all but one of the side-effects listed on her bottle of anti-malarial tablets (liver failure, in case you were wondering) and riding a horse up the side of a smoking, lava-filled volcano.

And that’s just the first week.

Picking up where her bestselling memoir, Mousetrapped: A Year and A Bit in Orlando, Florida, left off, Backpacked is the wry tale of what happened when one very reluctant backpacker hit the backpacker trail and discovered that beyond the mosquitoes, bad coffee and flea-infested hostels lie bigger mosquitoes, even worse coffee and flea-infested hostels whose bathrooms have no doors.

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Reviews:

“I read and loved Mousetrapped, so when I heard Catherine had a new book out, I couldn’t wait to dive in. I wasn’t disappointed — she takes the same dry wit and self-deprecating humour along for the ride in Backpacked. Highly recommended.” –Marsha Moore, author of 24 Hours: Paris and 24 Hours: London

“[Catherine Ryan Howard has] injected such humour into this book that I found myself laughing out loud on many occasions … I felt as if I was part of Catherine’s journey and she writes about the places she and Sheelagh visited … with so much passion that I’m tempted to hop on the next flight to Guatemala. Backpacked is just brilliant, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d hugely recommend it.” –Leah Graham of ChickLitNewsandReviews.com

“[The] self-deprecating tone is genuine and grounded in sanity, which makes the voice a thoroughly likeable one. I found [Backpacked] pretty funny.” –Susan Griffith, author of Work Your Way Around the World