Honduras Notebook
“We believe in the power of science, exploration, and storytelling to change the world.” That’s National Geographic’s mission statement, and living it is not without risks. Charging hippos, aggressive sharks, stampeding elephants, even abduction by rebels: Our contributors and explorers have been through it all. Sometimes, though, the biggest problems are caused by the smallest things—which brings us to the plight of some colleagues in this month’s issue.
“We didn’t know about the sand flies,” says Doug Preston, who wrote our article on the discovery of a pre-Columbian city in a remote rain forest in eastern Honduras. What Preston, photographer Dave Yoder, and National Geographic grantee Chris Fisher did know, early on, was that the assignment would be challenging. “From the air, it looked like a tropical paradise,”…