One of the enduring myths of Honduras involves the fabled La Ciudad Blanca, a shimmering yet elusive target for would-be explorers across the centuries.
“The Lost City of the Monkey God” is Douglas Preston’s account of the expedition that finally penetrated the treacherous jungle terrain to locate the legendary outpost.
“Monkey God” was an alternate name for a place presumed by many as existing only in rumor and barroom tales.
Preston, an author of several adventurous nonfiction books as well as a popular crimes series with Lincoln Child, was invited to join the group that proved the myth was fact back in February 2015.
Documentary filmmakers Steve Elkins and Bill Benenson conducted an aerial survey in 2012, using the latest in space-imaging technology to identify a promising crater-shaped site in La Mosquitia.
The expedition ensued.
Deep in Honduras, La Mosquitia is vast and mostly unexplored. The main reason: It’s one of the most dangerous places in the world.
The jungle is the thickest on Earth, carpeting mountain chains that make the region close to impenetrable. If an explorer isn’t swept into one of the many deep ravines by a flash flood or a landslide, deadly pools of mud can swallow a man whole.
Giant snakes and jaguars patrol the interior. So does disease.
Preston neared his hammock on night one of the expedition to find an unwelcome visitor. A giant fer-de-lance, a deadly pit viper with incredible reach, was coiled in the strike position less than 3 feet away.
The team traveled with three former British special forces members. Andrew Wood, who went by the name “Woody,” stepped up. The snake “exploded into furious action . . . striking in every direction, spraying venom.”
Venom-stung skin bubbled on Woody’s hand as he wrestled the snake to the ground, finally slicing off its pulsating head.
Woody departed with a stern warning to the group: “There’s rarely just one.”
Later that night, Preston awoke to see an entire ground area glistening with cockroaches. A benign presence, at least.
Once camp was fully established, team members routinely reported the sounds of snakes slithering and jaguars prowling past their tents at night.
Though the team was initially brought in by helicopters, reaching the site was a more hands-on task. Woody hacked a swath through the thick foliage to a steep embankment. The team climbed up a wall of hanging vines, all too aware that a fer-de-lance could be nesting within.
Next up was crossing a river raging with rapids. The special forces trio linked arms to provide a human bridge. More trekking, wading and climbing followed.
At one point, team anthropologist Alicia Gonzalez became mired in the muck and started to sink. “I can’t move my legs at all,” she announced with remarkable calm as the mud reached her waist. “I’m going down. Really, folks, I’m going down.”
Two of the Brit ex-soldiers wrestled her free. The party moved forward.
The expedition was soon mapping extensive plazas, an earthen pyramid and propped stones that were possible altars or places of sacrifice.
At the end of one day, they stumbled on the most exciting discovery of all. Someone caught sight of some “weird stones” out of the corner of his eye. “Mayhem broke out,” Preston writes.
What he saw first was the snarling head of a jaguar sticking out of a forest floor. There was a cluster of carved objects, their tops visible like “stone icebergs.”
Chris Fisher, a Mesoamerican archeologist from the University of Colorado and chief archeologist on the expedition, insisted nothing could be excavated.
All agreed, though it was painful to depart without evidence of their finds.
Honduras has three highly lucrative underground economies: illegal deforestation, cartel drug runners and artifact looters. The latter made millions from desecrating historic sites.
The narcotraffickers were mainly a danger to explorers — but the looters posed a threat to history. A checkerboard pattern had shown up nearby in an aerial view of the jungle — deforestation to clear the path for the looters. “We had found the site in the nick of time,” one expert told Preston.
Fisher was right to ban any grab-and-run. The expedition was already under a siege of criticism, loudly decried by other scientists as a made-for-the-movies adventure of no scientific merit.
Only rigorous, documented excavation would support the trove of information the artifacts could reveal about a mysterious civilization that vanished about 500 years before.
That it was a civilization, distinct from the Maya, was supported by the space images showing 19 major developments strung close together along the valley. There was no lost city, but rather the lost cities of La Mosquitia.
Fisher was stunned about the cache, he later confided to Preston: “I expected to find a city, but I didn’t expect this.”
The team returned to the jungle in January 2016, and uncovered a trove of 200 artifacts. Eventually, 500 in all were unearthed.
Fisher made two important discoveries. This wasn’t an accumulation of offerings made over years and centuries. The artifacts, all left at one time, were purposefully broken.
The implication was that the shattered sculptures were left as an offering by the last survivors of the city before they abandoned “La Cuidad Blanca.”
But what was the catastrophe that eradicated the mysterious civilization around A.D. 1500?
The Spanish conquest was underway, but the impenetrable nature of the valley spared its citizens from the conquistadors and roaming slave traders.
What they may not have escaped were the European diseases imported by the Spanish invaders. Smallpox and measles ravaged other native populations by as much as 90%.
It was entirely possibly that natives fleeing slave traders carried pathogens with them — though an affliction that struck a significant number of the expedition on homecoming suggested another possibility to Preston.
As most of the massive bug bites from the expedition faded, Preston found one growing uglier. Other members reported the same problem, sparking a frantic search for a diagnosis that led to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
All were infected with a mucosal leishmaniasis, the result of a sandfly bite.
It starts as a simple skin sore. But when it moves to the face, ulcers eat away the nose and lips from the inside before the parasite devours the bones, upper jaw and teeth.
Mucosal leishmaniasis is incurable, but it can be treated with amphotericin B, a drug known as “amphoterrible.” It’s a treatment of last resort because the side effects are so ghastly and sometimes agonizing.
The drug promises an 85% remission rate, about as good as it gets. Preston reports that his case of “leish” appeared to be recurring as he wrote the book.
It occurred to Preston that a strain of mucosal leishmaniasis might have destroyed the La Mosquitia civilization, but research has yet to be done.
There is still so much to be learned about the mysterious civilization that vanished, but one thing is now known.
The president of Honduras, Juan Hernandez, has proclaimed the lost city has been found and henceforth would be known as La Ciudad del Jaguar, the City of the Jaguar.
Its future remains to be seen.
