The Sharks of Lake Nicaragua

Whether he's engaging in aerial combat or riding an Ididarod sled, Randy Wayne White is one of America's most adventurous travelers. He studies antiterrorist driving techniques, dives for golf balls in a pond at a country club, hunts his fellow man with a paint gun, ice fishes for walleye with X-ray-stunned nightcrawlers, and poaches Panamanian crocodiles or goes pig shooting in the Australian outback. With self-effacing optimism, White captures the joys and fears of wandering the earth's surface with an eclectic cast of weirdo fellow travelers a frog that won't jump, a group of expatriate Brits who've developed an interesting cure for road jaundice, and even a mad Australian scientist. Though he rarely finds what he's looking for such as the legendary landlocked bull sharks of Nicaragua, or the secret to successful winter fishing on a Minnesota lake he develops a Zenlike passion for the means and a rare ability to revel in the rib-aching humor of each exotic trip. In the end, White leaves the reader mesmerized by the potential of undiscovered places and the promise of endless adventure in unfamiliar territory, from Florida to Bangkok to Borneo, and everywhere in between. An icon to the new breed of thick-skinned, high-endurance adventure travelers of the 1990s, Randy White uniquely extols the pleasures of being alone and on the move.