High Adventure

Description for HIGH ADVENTURE by Donald E Westlake:

Kirby Galway may be a low-level marijuana smuggler in Belize, but the man has a dream -- to make lots and lots of money. So when a local official offers him a back-jungle tract of land he swears would make a perfect cattle ranch, Kirby jumps at the opportunity. Unfortunately, he lands himself in a swamp -- that he now owns.
 
Kirby begins selling homemade “artifacts” from his property to American museums and witless tourists, even building a fake ancient temple and recruiting a tribe of Mayan Indians who know a good scam when they see one.
 
But his cash-cow paradise soon attracts the attention of two snooping New York reporters, a beautiful archaeologist from UCLA, and a troop of Guatemalan guerillas just itching to shoot somebody. Kirby is going to have to talk fast, move faster, and pull out every dirty trick he knows if he's going to get out of this alive . . .