Author and traveller Simon Reeve has completed his greatest challenge yet out - circling the world around the Tropic of Capricorn, the southern limit of the tropical zone. Simon Reeve is becoming one of television’s seasoned travellers, but that doesn’t mean the world is running out of ways to surprise him. Filming in Madagascar for his latest BBC series, he was urged by his guide – a member of the Madagascan royal family, no less – to sample a local delicacy. ‘It was Giant Penis Soup,’ he recalls. ‘It’s the penis of the zebu, which is a kind of Asiatic cow. And its penis really is giant. One of the least pleasant culinary experiences I’ve had.’ Which means it must taste really bad: these are the words of a man who, in other countries, ate dried caterpillars, grilled llama and sheep’s eyes.
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Tropic of Capricorn - Simon Reeve. Video hosted on Youtube. In his greatest challenge yet, author and broadcaster Simon Reeve sets out on a unique journey to track the Tropic of Capricorn around the globe. Motivated by a desire to learn more about forgotten corners of the world, Simon heads east through Africa, Australia and South America, discovering breathtaking sights, strange rituals, desperate poverty and exotic wildlife. For the 22,835-mile Tropic of Capricorn marks the southern border of the tropics, and crosses some of the wildest and most spectacular parts of our planet. This book and TV series has a strong current affairs theme, with issues including vanishing forests, poverty, smuggling, threatened whales and a forgotten genocide. But it is also a spectacular travelogue. Simon crosses the Kalahari Desert and the stark Atacama Desert of Chile, perhaps the driest place on Earth. Following Capricorn takes him over hills, across lush valleys, rusting railway lines, dusty roads, between homes and hovels, through farms and villages, to the biggest city in the entire developing world. In this exciting new book and TV series, Simon Reeve finds giant rats detecting landmines and is forced to eat penis soup by Madagascan royalty. Simon meets miners scrabbling for gems in dark, dangerous tunnels and the British anthropologist fighting to save forest communities in South America. He goes hunting with a legendary tribe of former cannibals, struggles the equivalent of half-way up Everest, survives on ‘piss pills’ and coca leaves, eats dried caterpillars, grilled llama, sheep eyes, and searches for wild honey in the forests of northern Argentina.
While following Capricorn Simon is surrounded by a pack of hungry cheetahs, finds flamingoes 4km up in the Andes, a pregnant humpback whale off Australia, lemurs in Madagascar and elephants under threat of culling in southern Africa. He witnesses the age-old ceremony that sparks the Holy Fire of the Herero tribe, discovers desperate Zimbabweans jumping razor wire to get into South Africa, meets a traditional healer now becoming part of the Botswanan NHS and is taught to shoot an AK-47 by Afrikaaner farmers.
Simon visits a diamond mine described as the most lucrative hole on the planet, but discovers villagers living in poverty next to luxury hotels, squalor in the shadow of Uluru (Ayers Rock) and bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef. He meets the French ‘Catman’ saving cheetahs in Namibia, Chinese businessmen making their fortune in Africa, prostitutes ravaged by AIDS and surviving Bushmen who live deep inside the Kalahari desert alongside their lion ‘cousins’.
Next to the worst asbestos-contaminated site in the world Simon finds a devoted couple refusing to leave their home. He travels along Capricorn by van, car, train, boat, horseback, helicopter, plane, and roars through the Australian Outback in a 50-metre-long $1m road train. Simon learns how ‘tavy’ has destroyed the forests of Madagascar, and visits the Great Barrier Reef, the Kruger National Park, and the Iguaçu falls, the most impressive waterfalls in the world.
(From: Shoot an Scribble.)
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