"I began to daydream about the jungle...."
On April 6, 1940, explorer and future World War II spy Theodore Morde (who would one day attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler), anxious about the perilous journey that lay ahead of him, struggled to fall asleep at the Paris Hotel in La Ceiba, Honduras.
Nearly seventy years later, in the same hotel, acclaimed journalist Christopher S. Stewart wonders what he's gotten himself into. Stewart and Morde seek the same answer on their quests: the solution to the riddle of the whereabouts of Ciudad Blanca, buried somewhere deep in the rain forest on the Mosquito Coast. Imagining an immense and immaculate El Dorado–like city made entirely of gold, explorers as far back as the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés have tried to find the fabled White City. Others have gone looking for tall white cliffs and gigantic stone temples—no one found a trace.
Legends, like the jungle, are dense and captivating. Many have sought their fortune or fame down the Río Patuca—from Christopher Columbus to present-day college professors—and many have died or disappeared. What begins as a passing interest slowly turns into an obsession as Stewart pieces together the whirlwind life and mysterious death of Morde, a man who had sailed around the world five times before he was thirty and claimed to have discovered what he called the Lost City of the Monkey God.
Armed with Morde's personal notebooks and the enigmatic coordinates etched on his well-worn walking stick, Stewart sets out to test the jungle himself—and to test himself in the jungle. As we follow the parallel journeys of Morde and Stewart, the ultimate destination morphs with their every twist and turn. Are they walking in circles? Or are they running from their own shadows? Jungleland is part detective story, part classic tale of man versus wild in the tradition of The Lost City of Z and Lost in Shangri-La. A story of young fatherhood as well as the timeless call of adventure, this is an epic search for answers in a place where nothing is guaranteed, least of all survival.
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"Another book in the style of "The Lost City of Z" except instead of Brazil we are in Honduras. Same alternating between the present quest and the early 20th Century quest of another explorer, this time an explorer turned OSS agent during WW II. This is a quick read and it's written in a can't put it down manner. Great maps too. Lots of them. And it even has pictures. Would have liked more of the actual ruins though. The author seems like the last type of guy to undertake this journey and it's entertaining reading as you listen to his pity parties and his whining about the physicality of the ordeal and missing his family-love the honesty. I just want to say "suck it up, you asked for it. Man up, dude." Really fascinating account of the man who claimed to find the White City but who called it"The Lost City of the Monkey God." That man was Theodore Morde, who grew up in New Bedford, MA and went on to become an OSS agent serving all over the world( mostly the Middle East) during WW II. He was even involved with von Papen, the Nazi ambassador to Turkey, in a plot to kill Hitler which FDR personally nixed. It's always a pleasure to find these fascinating accounts, thrillingly told about lost cities with harrowing escapes from wild animals, violent criminals, etc.."
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Chris (4 out of 5 stars)