Dan’s Reviews > The Lost City of the Monkey God > Status Update

He boarded a rickety single-engine plane holding the gadget that would change everything: lidar, a technically sophisticated, secret device capable of mapping the landscape under the thickest rainforest canopy. The flight showed the unmistakable sight of a vast metropolis in an unexplored valley surrounded by steep mountains, tantalizing signs of not only an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, forgotten civilisation.

 led a team of scientists on a bold new journey three quarters of a century later. He boarded a rickety single-engine plane holding the gadget in 2012.

Anyone who approaches this holy city will become sick and die, they claim. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the jungle with hundreds of objects and an enthralling tale about discovering the Lost City of the Monkey God—but then committed suicide without disclosing its site.

Rumors have spread of an abandoned city of enormous riches concealed somewhere in Honduran interior since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, dubbed the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Tribes speak of ancestors who migrated to the area to avoid Spanish invaders.

It's a 500-year-old legend. A curse from the past. A fascinating medical puzzle. And a daring expedition into the middle of the world's densest jungle.