Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter

by Josh Gates

  I watch as the safety line in front of my face goes slack. The only thing keeping me from falling into the abyss is the grip of my right hand. A hand that is sore and turning numb. There’s nothing to do but wait.

  I shine my light at the wall and notice the faint grooves of chisel marks made by the workers who originally dug this pit of despair. Do you remember that scene in The Silence of the Lambs where the senator’s daughter is down in that well, and she has to put the lotion in the basket (lest she “get the hose”)? As Buffalo Bill hoists the basket up, the light illuminates fingernail marks on the walls of the well, and she completely and utterly loses her shit. As though before this moment she thought that maybe this situation was going to shake out okay for her. That’s me. I see the chisel marks in the wall, feel utterly helpless, and begin to panic. I’m never getting out of this place. I’m going to die here.

  I turn my headlamp off with my free hand. The darkness is everywhere now. I picture the bottom of the shaft. How long would the fall take? What would I land on? Skeletons? Fear begins to unhinge my mind, and I picture alien creatures clinging to the walls or ghoulish miners reaching up at me from the tenebrous depths. The dread moves into my body, paralyzing my muscles. I feel the rope slip an inch through my fingers. I’m very close to tears.

  Then I stop. I take a series of deep breaths, lean my forehead against the rope, and tell myself to calm down. I turn the light back on and stare at a groove in the wall, focusing on it with every scrap of concentration that I can muster. I hold fast to my line. In time, the safety rope tightens, and I begin to rise. I let my grip relax and am hoisted toward the surface.

  Lesson: Never, ever panic. It helps nothing and makes the rope slip.

  Hippo attack: West Africa

  * * *

  We decide to take a boat into hippo-infested waters. This turns out to be a bad idea. The lesson here is pretty straightforward: Leave hippos alone.

  Waterfall of doom: Madagascars

  * * *

  Charging through the cloying, black jungle, I swat at menacing vines and oversized leaves that whip by my face. Madagascar’s flora is so otherworldly that I may as well be reenacting a scene from Avatar. We’ve come here looking for a mysterious jungle creature known as the Kalanoro, based on dozens of eyewitness reports generated from this patch of wilderness. Just ahead of me, an animal is getting away, and I want to know what it is. Behind me, our camera operator, Gabe, and sound guy, Mike, are keeping pace. We’re running alongside a fast-flowing river.

  Suddenly there’s nothing ahead of me, and I wave my arms in backward circles to stop my momentum. I slide to a halt at the top of an abrupt cliff. The river plunges over the lip in a spectacular waterfall that cascades down with a roar. I look down into a shimmering lagoon, surrounded on all sides by jungle.

  It’s an intoxicatingly beautiful place. So much so that I’m drunk with impulsivity. And at that moment, I almost jump. I almost just sail off the edge into the humid night air and the darksome waters below. I don’t, though. I feel my muscles relax and the moment pass. “What are you doing?” Mike asks as I squint down at the bottom of the falls.

  “Nothing. I was going to jump. I’m not sure how deep it is, though.”

  “Are you nuts?” Mike asks. “It must be a fifty-foot drop.”

  “I know, but I think it’s deep. Don’t you just want to jump off this thing?”

  Mike looks over the edge and beams. “Totally.” This is the type of people we hire.

  The animal we were after is long gone by now. Mike and I hike down to the water’s edge to determine the depth of the pool. Gabe stays at the top for a well-earned cigarette. If the water is deep enough, we can scramble back up the ridge and jump.

  The hike down is miserable. We slip against crumbling ledges, ensnared by hundreds of plants. At the bottom we draw near to the water’s edge, which is choked with vines and spiderwebs. I’m sure there are snakes here, and I’m praying there aren’t crocs. Mike and I look at each other in a way that silently conveys: We’re going to take our clothes off now and go swimming in a tropical lagoon together, but it’s not going to be weird.

  We strip down, dive into the water, and begin paddling toward the falls. By the time we reach the center of the pool, the sound of the crashing falls is deafening. Still swimming, I look up at the cliff and the cloud-cradled moon beyond. It would almost be romantic if I weren’t with a naked Mexican dude. We count to three and submerge. We’d need at least fifteen feet of freeboard here to make the jump viable. Instead, I immediately feel my feet hit the bottom. In fact, I can stand. There are jagged rocks everywhere, and most of the lagoon can’t be more than five feet deep.

  There is a hardwired function in our minds designed to keep us out of harm’s way. Sometimes it’s worth overriding that instinct, and sometimes, like tonight, it decidedly isn’t. The takeaway here is tried and most certainly true.

  Lesson: Look before you leap.

  Pukefest: Micronesia

  * * *

  I’m sweatier than usual, if that’s even possible. Rivulets of water are streaming off my forehead as I walk by torchlight through the jungle ruins. The flickering flame illuminates the basalt walls of an overgrown tomb and the outline of a narrow path beneath my feet. I’m alone and trying to get back to our base camp; I’m not sure that I’m going to make it. A small GPS receiver in my hand illuminates directions for me. But I falter, dropping to my knees, letting the torch be extinguished on the wet ground. I reach into my pocket and grab a headlamp, turning it on with a click and banishing a cone of darkness. Suddenly a thick column of vomit shoots out of my mouth.

  Our executive producer, Brad Kuhlman, loves to trot out the Boy Scout motto. Before we leave the country each season, he sits the whole group down and says, “I used to be a Boy Scout, and the Scout’s motto is: Be Prepared.” I can’t help but raise an eyebrow at the fact that while I’m “being prepared,” he’s back at home golfing, eating sushi, and kicking back in the Hollywood Hills. But that’s beside the point.

  Back at base camp I am looked over by our paramedic, Shawn, who administers an IV. Over the course of the next few hours, I will vomit eighteen times and receive three bags of much-needed fluid through my arm. I won’t even begin to tell you what’s happening below my waist. The point is that without the electronics that led me back to camp or the medicines waiting for me there, I might have found myself in an even worse situation.

  Now, I’m all for being whisked wherever the wind blows, but when it comes to adventure travel, you need to have the right tools for the job. If you’re headed to the ice planet of Hoth, you need to bring a winter coat. If you’re hiking across the Sahara, you should carry a canteen or two. And if you’re going to muck about in the jungles of the developing world, you need a GPS, headlamp, and access to medicine (in my case, administered by an actual medic).

  From pocketknives to granola bars, I hone my travel kit every time I leave the country, learning from my mistakes and adjusting the items I need for the journey at hand. The Boy Scouts (and Brad) are right.

  Lesson: Be Prepared.

  Roof rips off airplane: Romania

  * * *

  The pilot adjusts the flaps and begins to bank around toward an open field. Time seems to slow down, and I think about the circumstances that brought me here. . . . I manage to catch the pilot’s gaze for only a moment; above the din he looks at me and yells, “We must go back!”

  Indeed. We must. With the roof torn off, the aircraft is difficult to control. If the pilot can’t land this thing soon, what’s left of the plane is going to take a much more direct route to the ground. There’s absolutely nothing that I can do to help this situation. I’m powerless, which in itself is the lesson. Sometimes you just can’t sway the forces of the universe to better your situation. It’s out of your hands from time to time.

  Lesson: Let go and enjoy the ride.

  CASE FILE: FLYING FIENDS

  NAMES: Thunderbird, Jersey Devil, Ropen
, Kikiyaon, Kongamato, Ahool, Fangalobolo.

  DESCRIPTION: These are winged predators, commonly reported as large and prehistoric. Other variations include giant bats, oversized owls, or, in the case of the Jersey Devil, an airborne demon.

  LOCATIONS: British Columbia, Alaska, Africa, Madagascar, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and weirdly, New Jersey.

  STATUS: Evidence of flying cryptids comes almost exclusively from eyewitness reports. Little photographic documentation exists. A common thread is a belief that these creatures live in caves, probably because it answers the troubling question of why we don’t regularly see them out in the wild.

  In the age of the dinosaur, massive flying pterosaurs ruled the sky. With a wingspan of up to thirty feet, these long-beaked and leathery-winged predators bear little resemblance to the reptiles of today. But nearly all of these animals share the same modus operandi. They supposedly swoop down from on high, plucking victims off their feet with razor-sharp talons before devouring their unsuspecting lunch. In the case of the Jersey Devil, the beast seems satisfied with just scaring motorists, which, if you’ve ever driven down the Jersey Turnpike, is actually pretty tough to do.

  VERDICT: After investigating several varieties of flying fiends, I’m happy to go on record as saying that I think the majority of eyewitness recollections are based on actual encounters. Folks who think they’ve seen an unknown aviator are some of the most earnest I’ve met. I just think that most of the time they’re misidentifying what they’re seeing. The major problem is that scale is notoriously difficult to establish in the sky. Without surrounding natural features to provide perspective, estimating an animal’s size in flight (not to mention clearly recalling its features) is nearly impossible. In my travels, I’ve ducked down at the sight of large species of bats with wingspans of four feet. But from the ground they look like that demon in Fantasia.

  Even more problematic is the fact that the regions where stories of these winged behemoths are most prevalent are also home to oversized birds. In 2002 a pilot in Alaska made international headlines when he and his passengers spotted a large, birdlike creature with a wingspan he claimed was the length of his Cessna. Though many believed this to be the legendary Thunderbird of Native American folklore, biologists contend that it might have been a rare Steller’s sea eagle, a predatory bird with a nearly ten-foot wingspan.

  In a class by itself, tales of the Jersey Devil are some of the richest on record. A bizarrely hoofed, flying biped, the creature has the distinction of being America’s oldest monster. Still, the roots of the Devil legend are clearly folkloric (it was rumored to be the satanic offspring of an unlucky local woman), and despite hundreds of years of sightings, there still isn’t a shred of physical evidence to support its existence.

  As for me, until someone produces a four-foot feather or a bird dropping on my car that’s the size of my car, I’m staying on the sidelines. Despite passionate testimony to the contrary and having seen a few anomalies myself, I consider the existence of large flying creatures the least probable of all cryptids.

  Take that, Big Bird.

  11: Worst. Vacation. Ever.

  * * *

  Cabo San Lucas, 2007

  * * *

  It began, like most disastrous enterprises, innocently enough. My best friend Jon and I decided to take a road trip. After spending nearly every waking moment of our summers together as children, our careers had carried us to opposite coasts. Jon, a medical student on his way to becoming a doctor, was living in New York, and I, a burgeoning monster hunter, was in Los Angeles. Jon had a week off, and I was looking for a little R&R after a season of Destination Truth.

  I can’t remember which of us decided on Mexico, and for the sake of our friendship, it’s probably better that way. What I do remember is that we planned for Jon to fly to Los Angeles and that we’d drive to Cabo San Lucas at the terminal end of the Baja California Peninsula. What followed remains the absolute worst trip in a storied career as a professional traveler. But, like I said, it began innocently enough. . . .

  Jon flies to LA, and we spend the night at my loft in Hollywood before setting off the next morning. Though we have a full night at our disposal, the extent of our vacation planning consists of a Google search that reveals the distance from my front door to Cabo San Lucas as roughly 1,200 miles. No problem, we think. Should be able to knock that out in a long day.

  Day one. We start bright and early, and the drive to the border proves easy enough. The freeway winds down the coast and past the sunny skyline of San Diego. Within three hours we’re nearing Mexico. It’s around this time that I make the only sensible decision of the entire trip. After hearing horror stories of carjackings, I decide to park on the California side of the border and rent a car on the other side. I call Hertz on my cell phone and get a quote for a rental at the Tijuana airport. The rate is reasonable enough: thirty dollars a day. Mind you, I don’t actually book the car. I just check the price.

  After parking in an anonymous lot amidst a million other vehicles, we sling backpacks over our shoulders and walk through customs, over the footbridge, and into Mexico. As two gringos crossing the border, we must look appetizing to the horde of loitering locals, who perk up at our approach.

  “Tequila?”

  “Señoritas?”

  “Drogas?”

  We wave off their efforts at temptation and head straight for a taxi driver leaning against the hood of his car. “Tijuana airport, por favor,” I say.

  “Sí, señor. Forty dollars,” he says, opening the door.

  “What? The airport is ten minutes from here,” I protest.

  “Forty dollars, señor.”

  It takes half an hour of haggling in the morning heat with a dozen different drivers before we get someone to take us to the airport for the lower but still outrageous price of twenty dollars. It’s a rocky start.

  Inside the terminal, I speed-walk to the Hertz counter, checking my watch and shaking my head. It’s already past one in the afternoon, and we’re not even out of Tijuana. “Welcome to Hertz, señor. How can I help you?” a fat little man with a gigantic mustache and drooping eyes, inquires.

  “Hola. Necesito . . . um . . . rent . . . un auto para seis dias.”

  “Okay. Car for six days. Sí. Six hundred dollars,” he says.

  “What?!” I balk.

  Jon turns on his heels, walks away, and sits on a bench behind me. We’re clearly going to be here for a while.

  “I called the 800 number for Hertz, and I was quoted thirty dollars a day.”

  He is expressionless. “Is a different number, señor.”

  “What the hell does that mean? It’s the same company.”

  “Is a different number, señor. Price is six hundred dollars.”

  “Fine,” I exclaim, jamming my credit card and license back into my wallet. “Forget it. I’ll rent from another company.”

  I walk five feet to my right to the Avis car rental counter. The mustached man slides over. “Welcome to Avis, señor. How can I help you?”

  I glare at him. I walk on to the Budget counter, and he follows me, step for step. We stop and face each other. “Okay. Look,” I say, defeated. “I need a car. I can’t pay a hundred dollars a day. You must have something I can rent. A compact?”

  He looks at me from under his eyelids and ponders for a moment. Finally he says there’s one car available for $400. It’s a terrible rip-off, but my cell phone isn’t working; I can’t get a better quote. Mostly, I really just want to get the hell out of this awful border town. “Fine. Great,” I agree.

  We’re led outside, and another employee brings our car around. Jon and I both pull off our sunglasses to take it in, mouths agape. A VW Beetle (original) with a cheap matte-white paint job. Inside, the car has been burned out and rebuilt. Other than the two aftermarket front seats, there isn’t a stitch of upholstery anywhere in the vehicle. Just exposed, rusting metal panels. It’s like an ad for tetanus shots. Manual transmission, of course, and
no air-conditioning. Intestinal wires spill out of a cavity in the dash where a radio once lived. “It’s perfect,” Jon says, grinning. And, in a way, it is perfect. Other than the rental price, this does seem like an appropriately ridiculous car for such an impromptu south-of-the-border adventure.

  Jon jumps in the driver’s side; I throw my backpack on what’s left of the backseat and slip my sandals off. We’re in high spirits as we sputter out of the parking lot, headed to the only slightly less shitty town of Rosarito. It’s nearly three in the afternoon.

  An hour and a half later, we’re sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic no more than a mile from the airport. We’ve made little progress, thanks to a Tijuana road construction project that’s about as organized as a street riot. Without a radio, we’re sitting in silence, Jon with his head against the steering wheel, me with my bare feet hanging out the window. By the time the congestion finally lets up, we’re both tired and irritable.

  The sun sets somewhere just past Rosarito, and we’re both feeling famished. We see a few fires burning on the side of the road, illuminating a makeshift taco stand. We pull over and order up a few plates of grub. It tastes delicious, although it’s hard to enjoy on account of the five shady Mexican guys giving us the stink eye from the next table. They’re dressed like the gang from Grease, and even though my Spanish is elementary, I know enough to understand that they’re talking about mugging us. Mexican Danny Zuko smiles at me, and I muster a smile back. We quietly retreat to the car, taking our tacos to go.

  The next town looks like it’s had a rough couple of centuries, and we check directly into the first motel we see. The room smells like mold, and the only lamp in the room isn’t working; at least I can park around back in case the Guacamole Gang from the taco stand drives this way.