The Sharks of Lake Nicaragua: True Tales of Adventure, Travel, and Fishing

From Publishers Weekly
For exciting adventures in feral pig-hunting, salt-water fly-fishing or crocodile poaching, it's hard to imagine a better guide than White. In these stories, originally published in different forms in Outside magazine, White (Batfishing in the Rainforest) proves his mettle as an incisive humorist and a first-rate travel journalist. A "desire not to be whacked" leads him to an antiterrorist driving school, where, with hilarious effect, he learns the ins and outs of avoiding bullets, rockets and bombs while operating a motor vehicle. In fighter-pilot training, he overcomes "sympathetic ocular/auditory response" ("If bounced around in an airplane, my eyes begin to water, so it appears as if I am weeping while I upchuck") and smokes his opponent with imaginary 20mm. cannons. White has a knack for the unexpected adventure. An innocent search for Pepto-Bismol in Panama City ends in a crocodile-hunting expedition. But it isn't until the book's final (and title) piece that White showcases the full range of his abilities as a writer. During his quixotic search for freshwater sharks, he becomes as immersed in the culture of the country as a 220-lb. American driving a Toyota Land Cruiser can be. He chases a pig into a sacred vestry, disrupting a wedding ceremony, and later gives shining new baseballs to children whose love of the game rivals his own. The portrait of Nicaragua and its people that emerges is a refreshingly unpoliticized history, skillfully interwoven with personal experience. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


New York Times
What Mr. White is good at is finding the unbeaten path to nowhere and teaching the reader how to follow his example. . . . And what he is very good at is evoking the scene once he gets there.


From Kirkus Reviews
Novelist White (The Mangrove Coast, 1998, etc.) skimmed the cream off his Outside magazine adventure-travel column for this collection of stouthearted, amusing essays. White is one game hombre who has for years stumbled forth over the boundaries of the day-to-day. Yes, he is paid to get scared witless, to go peer over the last edge and report back. Still, to make a horse's ass of himself in dangerous, or at least compromising, circumstancesthat takes moxie, and to survive, be it physically, or in terms of self-respect, takes a state of grace. Here he finds himself in 16 hard or strange places, with the usual supporting cast of international low-rent odd fellows. The lunacies for which his editors have volunteered him include dog-fighting in an F-16, dog mushing in Alaska (``I was being dragged by five speed-crazy sled dogs, dragged over hill and dale, maybe being dragged to deathor worse, to Nome''), and antiterrorist driving school (``If we dont rally the nerve to explore our automotive limits . . . They'll stop us, box us, then smoke us like cheap cigars''). There are fishing stories, though for White ``some people travel to fish, but I fish to travel,'' and there are a couple of more reflective essays, the goofiness of the assignment a pretext for taking the political pulse of Nicaragua or triggering memories of his mother so pungent your eyes burn. White often makes a reach for his gags rather than nesting them in his stories, but then that is part of his charm: he's not just capable of being a buffoon, he can be a bit of a jerk too, a good trick on the audience-identification front. And he's also worldly, informed, decent, a slap-up writer, and ready as he'll ever be. First-class entertainments, just outrageous enough that when White comes to spin them to his grandchildren, they won't believe a word. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Miami Sunday Herald
What fun it is to join White...vicariously but just about as vividly as if we were there.


Chicago Tribune
For armchair traveler and rugged adventurer alike, this is good, funny, invigorating stuff.


Tim Cahill
[Randy White] writes about his travels with subtle grace and laugh-out-loud humor.


Jon Krakauer
Randy White is a hell of a good writer, the real McCoy.


Paul Theroux
Randy White is not simply a wonderful writer; he is a fishing guide of genius.


Book Description
Whether he’s engaging in mock aerial combat or riding an Iditarod sled, Randy Wayne White is one of America’s most adventurous travelers. In this collection he studies anti-terrorist driving techniques, dives for golf balls in an alligator-infested pond, hunts his fellow man with a paint gun, ice-fishes for walleye with X-ray-stunned night-crawlers, and goes pig-shooting with Dr. Pavlov. With self-effacing optimism, White captures the joys and fears of wandering the earth’s surface with an eclectic cast of 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—like the legendary landlocked bull sharks of Lake Nicaragua—he develops a Zen-like “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 Borneo and everywhere in between. A leader of the new breed of thick-skinned, high-endurance adventure travelers of the 1990s, Randy Wayne White uniquely extols the pleasures of being “alone and on the move.”


From the Back Cover
Whether he's engaging in mock aerial combat or riding an Iditarod sled, Randy Wayne White is one of America's most adventurous travelers. In this collection he studies anti-terrorist driving techniques, dives for golf balls in an alligator-infested pond, hunts his fellow man with a paint gun, ice-fishes for walleye with X-ray-stunned night-crawlers, and goes pig-shooting with Dr. Pavlov. With self-effacing optimism, White captures the joys and fears of wandering the earth's surface with an eclectic cast of 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 - like the legendary landlocked bull sharks of Lake Nicaragua - he develops a Zen-like "passion for the means," and a rare ability to revel in the rib-aching humor o each exotic trip. (53/4 X 9, 232 pages)



About the Author
RANDY WAYNE WHITE, a former flats-fishing guide, wrote the popular "Out There" column for Outside magazine for many years. His books include "Batfishing in the Rainforest" and the Doc Ford mystery series. He is now a monthly columnist for Men’s Health magazine and lives on Pine Island, off the west coast of Florida.


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Randy White is a hell of a good writer, the real McCoy. — John Krakauer


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