Douglas Preston goes in search of a lost city in the thick jungles of Honduras and comes back with a killer disease and a heck of a story. And he plans on going back.
Douglas Preston froze in his tracks. An author and seasoned journalist for publications such as National Geographic and Natural History, Douglas didn’t need to look twice to realise that the reptile that lay coiled barely three feet away from where he was standing was one of the most venomous snakes in the world – the fer de lance. And now, the deadly creature had fixed its beady eyes on him as though waiting for the intruder to make a move.
It was late in the night and the writer, part of a team that included archaeologists, scientists and a jungle survival expert named Woody, had arrived via helicopter into a secret destination, code named T1, deep in the Honduran jungle. Their mission: to document the findings of what would be one of the most amazing archaeological finds in modern times – the lost city of the monkey god.
That is also the title of Douglas’ bestselling book – an edgeof-your seat thriller that tells how, despite grave danger to themselves, a team of experts discovered remains of a lost and forgotten civilisation deep in a jungle. Populated with a host of characters including scientists, drug dealers, smugglers and treasure seekers, the book details the wonders of discovering relics, attacks by animals and of insect bites that cause flesh to rot. It also makes a strong case for using modern remote sensing and detection technology to study vast swathes of scientifically unexplored land to advance archaeology.
Even before he signed up for the assignment, Douglas knew that the jungle was unforgiving. Thanks to few humans ever entering it in some 600 years, trees, many with trunks more than 4.5m in diameter. And an amazing variety of plants, some with sharp barbs that could shred skin, were growing lush and green. Howler monkeys, jaguars and tapirs were abundant as were extremely venomous snakes including the fer de lance.
Having set up his tent, Douglas was walking over to chat with the group about 40m away when, in the inky darkness of the night, his flashlight caught the snake. ‘It was the opposite of camouflaged,’ recalls the author, in an exclusive telephone interview with Friday from his home in the US.
In the fading flashlight, the reptile’s scaly back appeared aglow, its eyes two bright points, the tongue flicking in and out of its mouth. ‘It was very aroused and really tense,’ says Douglas, knowing that if he made one wrong move, the snake would attack him. Fer de lances are known to grow to a length of nearly 2m and can spring almost their body length while spewing venom from their fangs in fine jets to a distance of six feet. If not treated promptly, the bite can cause sepsis, acute renal failure, internal bleeding and death.
‘I gently called out ‘hey guys, there’s a snake here’,’ says Douglas.
Woody, the crack jungle survival expert, was over in a couple of seconds. ‘Keep your eyes and lights on it,’ he said. Using his machete, he quickly fashioned a snake lance – a long pole with a forked end. Then, in a lightning move, he thrust the forked end at the snake, pinning its neck to the ground even as
the reptile exploded into action.
‘Twisting and slashing and thrashing in all directions, it coiled itself around his arm. Woody managed to catch its head but at just that moment, it bared its fangs and sprayed venom all over his hand. Within seconds, Woody’s skin appeared to bubble.’
However, never relaxing his grip, he wrestled the snake to the ground, pinned it with his knee and sliced off its head.
‘It was such a shocking scene – straight out of a Stephen King novel,’ says the author.
Douglas would chance upon more fer de lances during his time in the Honduran jungles, but none would be killed. He would also see lions and tapirs, monkeys and jaguars. However, wild cats and poisonous reptiles were not what would bring the writer down. It would be the lowly sand fly – an insect a third the size of a mosquito – that infected him with the incurable and dreaded flesh-eating disease called leishmaniasis, which reduces a victim’s face to a gaping hole (more about that later).
So, despite being aware of the dangers lurking in the jungles, what made him risk his life to accompany the team?
‘I think it’s incredible that a lost city could still be discovered somewhere on earth in the 21st century,’ says the 61-year-old. ‘That is extraordinary. I feel very privileged to have been lucky and to have been part of that – not just at the very end but right from the very beginning; and my book tells that story.’
For more than a hundred years, explorers and adventurers have returned with fantastic tales of an apparently hastily abandoned White City that they claimed exists deep in the jungles in a remote valley in La Mosquitia, the easternmost part of Honduras. A mystical paradise, it was, some claimed, to house untold treasures – if one could discover it after overcoming the dangerous animals, reptiles, insects and the thick flora.
‘The reason the city remained undiscovered was because of geography,’ says Douglas. ‘With some of the thickest rainforests on the planet, dangerous mountain chains, steep ravines, quicksands that can swallow people, torrential waterfalls, deadly insects and animals, journeying into the jungles was – and is – extremely dangerous,’ he says. In fact, there is an
account in the book of how Douglas himself was very nearly sucked into quicksand.
Then in 2012, an aerial reconnaissance team sighted what appeared to be ruins of an ancient civilisation deep in the forest near the Nicaraguan border.
Utilising a hitherto rarely used technology for archaeological surveys called Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar), archaeologists and scientists mapped the terrain using a million-dollar device that is not unlike an X-ray machine. Fitted into a small plane that flew over the terrain in parallel lines, the machine beamed pulsed lasers, and measuring the difference in wavelength and return time of the reflected laser beams, generating a 3D image of the terrain.
‘The results were amazing,’ says Douglas. The team discovered at least two sites that appeared to house archaeological treasures barely a few feet beneath the soil. After perusing computer printouts, the scientists concluded that the remains were of an ancient city that dated between AD500 and 1000.
The next step was to ground-truth the site – corroborate image data to real features on the ground.
In 2015, Douglas, a correspondent for National Geographic, joined the expedition that set off deep into the Honduran jungles to explore the legendary White City, as it was known locally.
One of the first to arrive on a Honduran military helicopter with three members of the team at T1 – so named to keep the location a secret from treasure hunters – Douglas says he felt ‘like I was leaving the 21st century behind.’ As soon as the chopper lifted off from the forest, silence descended. But barely a few seconds later, a strange roaring sound filled the forest ‘as though a giant dynamo was cranking up to full speed,’ says Douglas. It was bands of howler monkeys, perhaps agitated to see strangers in their terrain. It would be a sound the team would learn to live with during their time in the forest uncovering and documenting the ruins.
How did it feel to stand on ground untrodden by humans for centuries? I ask him.
‘It was an extraordinary moment,’ says Douglas. ‘It’s important for human beings to experience the grandeur of nature and understand just how small we really are in comparison to the greatness of the world.
‘When you are standing in a jungle where animals have never seen people before, they are not afraid to walk around you. The monkeys tried to drive us out of our campsite; tapirs walked about uncaring of our presence; peccaries [also known as skunk pigs] were unafraid of us… It’s during such moments that you realise that not only do you not belong there but it’s a hostile place. Nature doesn’t care about you – you are no longer the ruler of the universe. You are just another animal that could be eaten [by wild animals] and are just [another link in the food chain]. That’s actually quite a profound feeling.’
At a time when the moon and even some planets have been mapped, the author says that he was very surprised that they could still be places in the Honduran mountains that are not scientifically explored. ‘There are vast areas in the Mosquitia region that have mountains that are a mile tall and covered with the thickest jungle in the world. In these mountain ranges are valleys that are so difficult to get to, so dangerous, that they
have never been scientifically explored,’ he says.
Douglas writes in detail about how the team explored the 1,000-year-old ruins and discovered a treasure trove of sacred objects that seemed to have been hastily collected and deposited close to a pyramid – perhaps some kind of religious space – by the region’s original inhabitants before they all mysteriously vanished.
Among the over 500 artefacts discovered are a jaguar head, stone jars and urns with carved images of vultures, snakes and monkeys. ‘Archaeologists suggest that a mysterious catastrophe could have struck the city killing most of the inhabitants, and the survivors, struck with fear, collected the sacred objects and after offering them to their gods, simply walked away never to return,’ says Douglas.
Some experts theorise that the catastrophe could have been a deadly disease – not too far fetched when one considers the present health condition of the archaeological team that returned from the forest.
‘I used to slather DEET [insect repellent] over my body every night before sleeping under a mosquito net. There were insects you could hardly see,’ says Douglas.
Clearly that was not enough to stop pests from biting him. By the time he returned to civilisation – a week later – his body was covered with bites.
‘Six weeks after the expedition, the bites started to fade, but there was one on my arm that refused to go. Actually it looked like it was getting worse,’ he says.
Initially, Douglas wasn’t very concerned about it because it did not really hurt. ‘It was not infected but was like a bad sore. However, it gradually became ulcerated.’
A tad worried, the author checked with other members of the team if any of them were experiencing such infected sores. ‘The NatGeo photographer who was with me on the expedition took one look at the sore and thought it was leishmaniasis,’ he says.
Doctors at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suggested he undergo a few tests which came out positive: It was leishmaniasis.
Transmitted by a type of sand fly’s bite, leishmaniasis erupts weeks or months after being bitten. In its most serious form, it resembles leprosy and is potentially fatal, if untreated.
‘It’s like a leprosy in the sense that it eats away your skin. I would recommend that readers not Google leishmaniasis for pictures,’ warns Douglas
The danger of the disease is in its dissemination. ‘It attacks your nose and lips, and they fall off leaving a huge open sore where your face once was. It is awful.’
A cocktail of drugs – extremely painful when administered and with serious side effects - is aimed at preventing that from happening.
For a while, Douglas was sure that the disease was in remission when some symptoms disappeared. But early this year, that hope was dashed. ‘Unfortunately, it’s returned and I have to go to the NIH for another course of treatment. And I’m not the only one. It’s a very persistent strain and it’s returning to a lot of others on the expedition,’ he says.
But you are a brave man, I tell him. Days after being detected with the disease he volunteered to return to the forests to report on the second leg of the excavation.
Douglas laughs. ‘The funny thing is that I can’t get it a second time,’ he says.
However, news of the discovery of the lost city triggered a major controversy with more than 20 researchers and archaeologists claiming that the find was exaggerated. They
Archaeologists suggest a mysterious catastrophe could have struck the city killing most of the inhabitants
said the city was never ‘lost’ because the perspective of indigenous people was never taken into account.
That said, there is little doubt that the relics offer a deeper insight into the history and culture of the region.
So, are we destroying a part of nature by conducting excavations in such places and writing about them thereby throwing them open to indiscriminate tourism?
‘I did think about it quite a bit,’ says Douglas. ‘The truth is the jungle is being destroyed by illegal logging and illegal clear-cutting. If we had not gone there now, it would have only been about 10 years before [the locals] clear-cut and reach the entrance of the valley - and irretrievably destroy everything.
‘As a result of the expedition, the Honduran government is protecting the area. They have stopped clear-cutting and logging and have actually pushed some of the people back and out of the [archaeologically sensitive] areas. So it is protected. In a sense, the archaeologists have protected the area.’
The author is also pretty sure the place would not become a tourist magnet. ‘It seems hard that tourists would be able to go into the area because the valley is a hot zone of disease. A very high percentage of people who go there return with leishmaniasis. Also, there’s an unbelievably large number of really venomous snakes, jaguars, mountain lions and cougars out there. It’s not a safe area for any kind of tourism.
‘Archaeologists have told me they could not risk bringing students and experts into the jungle for excavations. “It’s simply too dangerous,’ they told me.’’
Has he ever felt that the place should have been left untouched?
‘There is a part of me that feels sad that some of the secrets of the world have been taken away by this discovery,’ says Douglas. ‘But it was incredible to discover a lost city and culture in this age. My book tells that story and I feel very privileged to have been lucky and to have been part of that story.’