A Risk Taker's Journey

At the age of five, Manuel Donoso rode a wooden horse and pretended he was a cowboy. Two years later, he saddled a real horse and became a real “cowboy”. As a teenager, he found himself conscripted into the Chilean Army. While there, he experienced many abuses of power. The witnessing of the crushing of an aspiring young soldier’s military dreams was the final straw. This drove him to persuade the country’s president, Eduardo Frei Montalva, to arrange for his discharge. Not satisfied with being a dreamer in Chile’s Central Valley, he travelled from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere. Journeying through the Amazon, he marveled at the exotic creatures, was intrigued at the mysterious colours of the Amazon River, yet was horrified by the brutality of man he experienced along the way. While penniless in Central America, yet wanting to get to the United States, he became a dreamer again. He and a group of young friends put together a crazy form of transportation that worked, just not the way they expected. Eventually, he made it to Canada the easy way—by plane. In his new home he met the girl of his dreams. She was so nice, he actually married her twice! Then he wrote his entire improbable story in a book and called it “A Risk Taker’s Journey”. What a life! What a story! You’ve got to read it.