Douglas Preston · 2017 · survival

Douglas Preston's 2017 true account. For centuries Honduras whispered of a lost 'White City' in the rainforest of La Mosquitia. In 2015 an airborne laser survey found ruins in an unexplored valley, and Preston joined the expedition that flew in from Catacamas to reach them - hacking through jungle thick with vipers and disease toward a civilization vanished five centuries before.

1. 1
   Catacamas

   At a rundown airfield in eastern Honduras the expedition musters - archaeologists, jungle-survival veterans, Honduran soldiers and a writer - to fly into a valley so remote its exact location is kept secret from looters.

2. 2
   La Mosquitia

   Military helicopters carry them over unbroken canopy into a hidden valley ringed by peaks, where they hack out a landing and a sodden camp in one of the last truly unexplored rainforests on Earth.

3. 3
   The lost city

   On foot through vipers, mud and downpour they reach the ruins the lasers found - plazas, mounds and a cache of carved stone left by a vanished people, untouched, and guarded now by the jungle and its diseases.