Monkey God, Jaguar City, Sandfly King

I thought Douglas Preston's The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story was going to be the usual archaeological/adventure/travel story-- in the vein of The Lost City of Z and the works of William Dalrymple-- and the first half of the book lives up to that promise.

There's some history of pre-Columbian Honduras-- which is at best obscure-- and then some embarrassing colonialism-- United Fruit and worker exploitation and outside government manipulation and all that-- and then an excellent tale of Theodore Morde. In 1940, Morde declared that he found the fabled White City of the aptly named Mosquitia region of the country, but this was actually a deception. He was prospecting gold and didn't want anyone to jump on his claim.

Then in 2012, surveyors in planes used LIDAR and located several sites in the jungle that looked very promising. In 2015, Preston accompanied a rugged archaeological expedition-- by helicopter-- int the valley where La Ciudad Blanca is located.

And they found stuff!

Preston's descriptions of the hardships of the jungle are just as entertaining as the archaeology: sink holes and dense foliage, brutal biting insects and the greasy flow of cockroaches on the jungle floor.

And snakes . . .

The fer-de-lance is a main character in the book, and Preston's descriptions of this large poisonous serpent really resonated with me (you'll see why in a moment). Apparently these snakes are truly dangerous. Preston calls them the "ultimate viper" and they reputedly kill more people in Central and South America than any other snake.

At one point in the book, a British commando enlisted to help the archaeologists, filmmakers, journalists, and organizers survive in the inhospitable jungle has to deal with an irate fer-de-lance that has crept into camp. He uses a forked stick, but the viper sprays poison onto his skin-- causing it to bubble-- and so he has to decapitate the creature and rush off to wash the away the venom before it drips into an open wound on his hand.

Fer-de-lances inject a tremendous amount of venom with razor sharp fangs that can penetrate leather boots. People often wear "snake gators" in areas where they are prevalent. At the very least, in the jungle, you should never step all the way over a log. Step on top first.

When my family went to Costa Rica in the summer, I knew that the fer-de-lance was a poisonous snake native to the area. I had seen them hanging from trees years ago when my wife and I traveled to Ecuador. But I didn't think they were actually dangerous. In my experience, snakes want nothing to do with people. But apparently the fer-de-lance is much more aggressive than your typical snake.

When we were hiking in the Tirimbina Rainforest Wildlife Refuge-- an astounding network of jungle trails and suspended bridges along the Sarapiqui River-- we encountered a couple of snakes. We would have never seen them if it wasn't for my son Ian's sharp eyes. One of the reasons we were at the reserve was because you can hike without a guide. Guides are great, but expensive-- and also, sometimes I like to walk fast. And it's fun to just explore and look for things without someone pointing them out. You can always identify them later with your phone.

Unless you're dead.

One of the snakes was right on the path, camouflaged in the mud. It was either a baby fer-de-lance or a small hog-nosed viper. Both venomous. I was smart enough to be wearing pants but my wife was in shorts. Here's a video of my moving the snake off the trail with a stick.

Just below the trail, in the brush, Ian spied a big fat snake. It did not seem bothered by us at all. It just lay there, coiled and ready to strike, staring at us. I clambered down a little bit and got a lousy photo. Judging by the size and coloration, this was most definitely a fer-de-lance. We did not actually know how dangerous this critter was. In retrospect, I would have made everyone wear pants. And I would have walked slower and watched my step.

My fer-de-lance photo!

This stuff all occurs in the first half of the book. Preston does the prerequisite history lesson. Then the city is discovered-- using cool technology-- the jungle is (sort of conquered) and artifacts are unearthed. I should warn you that spoilers (and devastation) lie ahead.

Next, there's some archaeological beef-- some folks think that this crew was another branch of the colonial white conquerors (even though they were working hand-in-hand with the Honduran government) and some other archaeologists and native tribes lay claim to the sites. But none of this holds any water. It turns out that some academics "would rather discuss ‘hot’ issues such as those of colonialism, white supremacy, hyper-masculinity, fantasy and imagination, [and] indigenous rights" rather than give credit to a serious academic expedition to a place that hasn't been inhabited for 500 years. These are the times.

Then the book really picks up steam again. Preston starts having some weird symptoms and gets a big sore on his arm. The same happens about half of the other folks that went on the trip. After much study (and visits to the NIH) they are all diagnosed with Leishmaniasis, a leading NTD (neglected tropical disease).

Leishmaniasis is the second deadliest parasitic disease in the world, behind only malaria. It is spread by infected sandflies.  Twelve million people have it. 60,000 a year die from it. Even if you can get medicine for it, it's terrible stuff. In fact, many doctors actually call amphotericin B "ampho-terrible " because it often makes patients feel terribly sick and can damage the kidneys.
 

Leishmaniasis is so awful because the the parasites don't devastate the body for a while before being summarily killed by the immune system. Instead, they “try to have tea with your immune system,” which is so much weirder and grosser. And they live on and on, doing awful things all the while.

At this point, the book has transformed into a combination of clinical medical descriptions of the author and his colleagues trying to combat this awful disease and Guns, Germs, and Steel . . . with an emphasis on the germs. Europeans and Asians had been living in cities in close proximity to livestock for thousands of years before they went to the New World. And so they had strong immune systems and were full of wacky diseases. This a 15,000 year pathogenic time bomb ready to explode, as soon as contact is made.

Once in a while, an animal pathogen will change in such a way that it suddenly infects a person. When people in the Near East first domesticated cattle from a type of wild ox called an aurochs, a mutation in the cowpox virus allowed it to jump into humans— and smallpox was born. Rinderpest in cattle migrated to people and became measles. Tuberculosis probably originated in cattle, influenza in birds and pigs, whooping cough in pigs or dogs, and malaria in chickens and ducks. The same process goes on today: Ebola probably jumped to humans from bats, while HIV crashed into our species from monkeys and chimpanzees. 

THIS is what mainly killed the natives of Honduras. There were other atrocities, of course, but nothing was as devastating as disease. Once the Europeans came,the New World became apocalyptic.

The nineteen people closest to you: All but one will die. (This of course counts you also as a survivor.) Think what it would be like for you, as it was for the author of the Cakchiquel manuscript, to watch all these people die —your children, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, your friends. Imagine the breakdown of every pillar of your society; imagine the wasteland left behind, the towns and cities abandoned, the fields overgrown, the houses and streets strewn with the unburied dead; imagine the wealth rendered worthless, the stench, the flies, the scavenging animals, the loneliness and silence. 
 

The book turns from jungle adventure to cautionary tale. Why did the people of Mosquitia disappear? Old World diseases. This is "what destroyed T1, the City of the Jaguar, and the ancient people of Mosquitia."

And while there is some irony in a New World disease attacking a bunch of mainly white people with Old World heritage, that is not really the situation. It is really a "Third World disease attacking First World people. The world is now divided into Third and First, not Old and New. Pathogens once confined to the Third World are now making deadly in roads into the First."

God forbid you get a combination of leish-- this is the affectionate diminutive for leishmaniasis-- and HIV.
 

HIV and leishmania become locked in a vicious cycle of mutual reinforcement. If a person with leishmaniasis gets HIV, the leish accelerates the onset of full-blown AIDS while blocking the effectiveness of anti-HIV drugs.

As of now, leish is still a Third World Disease, and thus neglected.

Leishmaniasis is a disease that thrives among the detritus of human misery and neglect: ramshackle housing, rats, overcrowded slums, garbage dumps, open sewers, feral dogs, malnutrition, addiction, lack of health care, poverty, and war.
 

But maybe not for long . . .
 

Leish continues to spread as predicted in the United States, by the end of the century it may no longer be confined to the “bottom billion” in faraway lands. It will be in our own backyards. Global warming has opened the southern door of the United States not just to leish but to many other diseases. 
 

It's seriously scary stuff, made more so by an author that is suffering from leish. And the leish is inspiring him to morbidly prophetic heights of prose. I expected more jungle excavation, not the end of civilization, but that's what he is portending. It's heavy and wild.

And it made me realize that we were awful lucky on our Costa Rica trip. The snakes are the tip of the iceberg. And you can SEE a snake (if you're Ian). We did a lot of jungle hikes, wearing shorts and not enough bug spray, and we were lucky not to get bitten by an infected sand-fly. It seems a lot of folks in Costa Rica were not so lucky. Mainly folks doing yoga in the jungle. There are loads of stories like this one and this one. Yikes.

This probably won't stop me from returning to Costa Rica. I loved it there. But i will slather on the DEET and wear long sleeves and pants, even when it's hot. And if it's my time to get leish, then leish it is. It's been like this for people for a long long time.