Into The Wild Searching The Jungle For Buried Mayan Treasure In Guatemala

February 10, 2006
Story and Photographs By John Murray

We stood silently on top of La Danta and listened to the stillness of the jungle. The only sound we heard was the heaving of our chests, the rhythmic thumping of our hearts banged in our ears. Eventually, in the distance, we heard a band of Howler monkeys.

Their growls sliced through the stillness low and deep like a foghorn warning sailors of looming danger. We gazed down on what appeared to be a series of low rolling hills, which were smaller pyramids that had been swallowed beneath jungle growth. We were looking down on a 3000 year old Mayan city that once had been one of the most prosperous and advanced civilizations on the planet. Now the entire city, the massive pyramids included, lay beneath jungle debris.

The clearing on top of La Danta was 20 feet long and ten feet across. It was late afternoon and we had hoped to catch the sunset. A bank of clouds rolled in and obscured the sun, so we sat and pondered our journey. There were five of us atop the pyramid that day. Among them was Dave Howard, a former editor at the Waterbury Observer, who at the time was a freelance writer living in NYC. Dave had snagged an assignment from Travel and Leisure Magazine to write about archaeologist Richard Hansen and his extraordinary 20 year effort to unearth the treasures of El Mirador. Dave invited me along to photograph the adventure.

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