The hard evidence amounted to a grainy photo published in a 1929 London newspaper. Sitting on a packing case, propped up with a large stick, was what purported to be the body of a giant ape -- the Mono Rey. It was said to have inhabited the dense jungles of northern Bolivia, around the Madidi river -- but the last person to explore the region, the redoubtable Major Percy Harrison Fawcett back in the 1920s, had since disappeared without a trace. For Simon Chapman, however, the jungle is the only place to be, & the denser & more remote the better. Which is why Chapman, along with two eccentric companions, took an all-too-collapsible canoe into the swamps & rainforests of Bolivia to find the mythical monster of the Madidi. By turns gripping, comic, & touching, & with a superb awareness of the natural world, The Monster of the Madidi marks the debut of an exceptional new travel writer.