3 Seconds in Bogotá: A True Story of Travel, Terror and Survival
 
Mark Playne had done everything right.
Six months travelling South America.
Every robbery scenario rehearsed.
Every precaution taken.
Three separate money stashes.
Studied responses for every conceivable threat.
His logical mind had prepared a fortress of contingencies.
Then came the moment none of it covered.
Past midnight in the Colombian capital.
A knife at the taxi driver's throat.
Armed men surrounding the vehicle.
Three seconds until the doors open.
 
His preparations offered nothing. Every rehearsed response was useless. And in that frozen instant, as time stretched and his rational mind flailed, a voice emerged from somewhere deeper:
"I've always been here. You're normally too busy to hear me."
 
This true story is not about planning. It is about what happens when planning fails and something older takes over.
As the narrator sifts through a lifetime of memories in those suspended seconds, he searches not for what he was taught, but for what he somehow already knows.
The question becomes brutally simple: trust the logical mind that built the useless fortress, or trust the gut feeling that logic cannot explain?
His life depends on the answer.
 
★★★★★ Possibly the best-written travel memoir I have ever read" - Simon Michael Prior
 
★★★★★ Hilariously scary! Cindy Lea
 
From flood-ravaged Argentine towns to Brazilian favelas, from ancient Incan ruins to the shadowy streets of Colombia's capital, this memoir weaves six months of cultural immersion, street market survival, and backpacker mishaps into the setup for one life-changing moment.
 
★★★★★ "Quentin Tarantino does the Rough Guide to South America" - Rosemary T
 
★★★★★ "a Hollywood movie disguised as a travel memoir" Travel Author Adam Fletcher
 
It is a book about the moment when you discover that your deepest instincts may be the only thing worth trusting.