Lost City of the Monkey God

[Quillback]

By Douglas Preston

Picked this up at the library, read it in 2 days, had a tough time putting it down, very good read IMO.

It's non-fiction, it is about a recent find of a "lost city" in the Honduran jungle.  It reads like an adventure novel, covers the logistics of getting there, the hassles of dealing with the Honduran government to get permits, and once there the struggles of dealing with an extremely hostile jungle environment.  Tick, chiggers, sand flies, jaguars, and fer de lance snakes - an extremely deadly snake - this place has it all. 

Last part of the book covers the ordeal that some of the expedition team members had to go through to deal with a disease call Leishmaniasis, they had to go to the NIH to get treated as there has been very little in the way of treatment yet developed for that disease.  Nasty parasitic disease that has many forms, some of which are deadly. 

The city itself had been abandoned 500 years ago, and since then there appear to be no signs of human visitation, and importantly no looting.  Very remote and inaccessible, they had to helicopter in to get there.

 

[Al Agnew]

Just read it.  Very good book.  It's amazing to realize that even with modern equipment and medicine, there are places that are so hostile to humans that you're taking your life in your hands just being there.  And amazing to imagine places like that which at one time must have had a thriving civilization with cleared land, agriculture, and building complexes, that are now nearly impenetrable jungle.