Recounted in the book is how he as a writer got invited to join a 2012 aerial mapping trip of a specific area within La Mosquita that was seen as a promising location of the city's ruins. The mapping effort was led by filmmaker Steve Elkins and utilized lidar, a technology that works like radar, bouncing lasers off the ground, in this case from a Cessna airline, to determine distance and find the existence of geologic features as well as structures. This aerial mapping appeared to confirm the existence of the city ruins and their location and then in 2015, Preston also was part of a ground expedition to survey the area, with Chris Fisher leading a team of archaeologists and financing provided in large part by filmmaker Bill Benenson.
The time on the ground in the jungle was recounted as quite dangerous, with the area containing poisonous snakes like the fer-de-lance, jaguars, disease, and drug cartel activity. Ruins were found and even from that, little known about the people who lived there, other than they weren't Mayan and their society basically vanished around 1,500 AD, the time the Spanish came to the Americas, bringing Europeans diseases the locals had never been exposed to and which decimated populations, even those that never came in direct contact with European explorers. Preston notes how it's said that a third of the native population across Hispaniola and the Caribbean died between 1494 and 1496 and it appears that whoever lived within this city abandoned it.
The book wraps up with how some members of the expedition team after returning home began to show as having acquired the tropical disease leishmaniasis, a third world one that as such has received scant attention and funding, but is noted in the book as being part of a group of third world diseases coming to the first world as a result of climate change. The Lost City of the Monkey God was somewhat sobering with this mention of how quickly native populations were decimated by disease, and the tale of disease troubles modern day expedition members faced upon their return, but it's also a great adventure tale told well by Preston.
