The Monster of the Madidi

A grainy Illustrated London News photograph from 1929 purports to show a giant monkey known as the 'Mono Rey', reputedly inhabiting the jungles of northern Bolivia. The last westerner to attempt a sighting, the redoubtable Major Percy Fawcett, had subsequently disappeared without trace.

Accompanied by an Englishman whose hobby is fighting mock mediaeval battles and an Australian who smoked the pages of his South American Handbook, Simon Chapman took an all-too-collapsible canoe up Bolivia's Madidi river to try and find that mythical monster.

In the classic English tradition that sets about turning a mad idea into an utter absurdity, Charlie, the Australian, proved more adept at catching improbably large fish than steering the canoe in a straight line. Their guides soon demanded precious chocolate pudding rations before any meaningful progress. Worst of all, each rare encounter with a human being brought reports that there was no monster after all...