The Codex

- sloth

My latest audio book from the library is an older one from Douglas Preston, The Codex. I'm not all that far into it, but it's interesting. A very rich man who made his millions by robbing tombs, has a terminal illness and instead of just leaving all his art and rare objects to his three sons, takes everything with him to an undisclosed place, entombinbg his possessions along with his body. The sons are encouraged, via a video-taped message from dad, to find the tomb and collect their inheritance. As it turns out, the tomb is located in Honduras, somewhere along the Mosquito Coast. Here's a little from Wikipedia about that area ....

La Mosquitia refers to the northeastern part of Honduras along the Mosquito Coast. It is an underdeveloped region of tropical rainforest accessible primarily by water and air. Its population include indigenous groups such as the Miskito, the Pech, Rama, Susu, and Tawakha. The Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage site, is a part of La Mosquitia.

And here's a bit more about the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, from Wikipedia ....

The Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve is 5,250 sqkm of preserved land in the La Mosquitia region on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Most of the land runs along the Río Plátano. The reserve has a number of endangered species and some of Honduras largest sections of forest. It has been a World Heritage site and biosphere reserve since 1982 .....

The reserve still has over 200 archeological sites, including the point where Christopher Columbus first discovered America. The reserve also contains Mayan ruins, including stone from buildings and roads, rock carvings, and other remains. Ciudad Blanca was a Mayan city that once stood where the reserve currently protects. The archeological site is still being excavated .....

The major ecosystems include Mangrove and freshwater swamps and marshes, sedge prairie, pine savanna, and gallery forest. There is a diverse amount of flora, estimated at over 2,000 species of vascular plants, although little has been written about it because many species are new or undiscovered .....

The region is rich with birds, including the king vulture, harpy eagle, great curassow, crested guan, scarlet macaw, green macaw and military macaw.

The representative species include white-faceds, mantled howler and spider monkeys, three-toed sloth, paca, kinkajou, coatimundi tayra, Central American otter, puma, collared and white-lipped peccaries and red brocket deer .....

The rare or endangered species: giant anteater, jaguar, ocelot, margay, Caribbean manatee, and Central American tapir. The amount of environmental education that exists in Honduras is minimal, so it is difficult to protect these endangered species ..... Logging and development continue to be problems, and the situation is exacerbated by an increasing population from poorer parts of Honduras or refugees from Nicaragua.


Our heroes, the three sons, separately search for the tomb with chosen companions, taking motorized dugouts along the rivers and tramping through the almost impenetrable rain forests, trying to avoid deadly creatures like the toothpick fish, a tiny parasitic freshwater catfish which swims into the gill openings of other aquatic species, feeding on their prey's blood (and it's attracted to human urethras as well, according to the story), or the bot fly, an insect that uses mosquitoes to implant its eggs into human beings for gestation.

Will they survive the environment to find the tomb before ruthless mercenaries (hired by a big pharmaceutical company after the codex, an index of Mayan medicinal plant lore lying among the treasures buried with the dead rich guy) are able to kill them? Stay tuned.