Umbrellas in the Jungle: A collection of humorous short stories of South American travel

When the door is left ajar and your dance card is empty and you're slipping down the batting order and you know that the old mountain-climbing, ocean-sailing, camping-in-the-mangroves-in-a-hammock old bastard is getting soft, yes is the answer. To everything.
Umbrellas in the Jungle is a collection of short stories from nine months travelling in South America from September 2023 until June 2024. Colombia and more specifically Gloria’s (the Author's mother-in-law) house rebuild was the original motivation, but this soon morphed into a convoluted 281 days in Colombia, Ecuador, Brasil and Peru. This is a series of cobbled nonsense sense (tangential interjections) based somewhat on reality. A stream of consciousness dripping with irony and sarcasm, founded on actual experiences, filled with incidental, sometimes superfluous information which, in some way, link to history, life and culture. Umbrellas in the Jungle is filled with stories which meander like a dunk attempting to walk a straight line at the local RBT, more or less in a straight line with various deviations which challenges one to think beyond the exact details and allow for self-indulgence and amplification.
Filled with moments of gentle smirks and the occasional clever chuckle, one could be challenged to research location, facts and veracity of said information, but only if one is inclined. There is a thread of truth and much opinion and exaggeration in the stories, as the author searches for a balance between spontaneity and superfluousness in each.
Initially motivated by the first story describing a child’s birthday party on the first weekend in Colombia, which lasted twelve hours, each day presented something noteworthy to record. Making this collection a curious read, is the mix of satirical commentary, tall tales and parody wrapped up as personal narrative giving a light-hearted insight into nine months on the road observed through observant eyes and astute filtering of details and a creative imagination with titles such as: Bear spray and eight-gauge wire; Two duke balls in a Marble Bag; Lidless on the Pan American; The day my Wife exploded; The miracle of Lycra; Ignoring the laws of gravity and other stuff; The Bipolar Engineer; Concrete Pillow; and Dust and Dead Parrots.