Tim Cahill has clambered up Mount Roraima in the Guyana highlands, searching for the site of Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World. He's dined on baked turtle lung in the desolate northeast of Australia and harvested poisonous sea snakes in the Philippines. He's watched a wrestling match between a shark and an "underwater zombie" during a horror movie shoot off the coast of Mexico.

In this collection of adventure travel writing, Tim Cahill writes about these close encounters, giving new meaning to the expression "going to extremes". He also briefs us on gorilla etiquette, porcupine vendettas, and the loathsome fate awaiting those who disturb ruins in the jungles