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00:03This week, join me in the jungles of South America
00:06as I search for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold.
00:11It was a dream that lured hundreds to risk their lives.
00:15It powered the conquest of South America,
00:18a city covered in gold, richer than anyone had ever imagined.
00:23Yet for centuries, most people have assumed
00:26that El Dorado was only a myth.
00:28Now, a recent discovery is giving explorers new hope.
00:32Could there really be a city of gold just waiting to be discovered?
00:36My quest to find out will take me from the high peaks of the Andes
00:40to the icy waters of Lake Titicaca
00:43to the mysterious pyramids of Paratuari deep in the Amazon jungle.
00:48We're digging for the truth, and we're going to extremes to do it.
01:05500 years ago, in the high Andes Mountains,
01:08a story began to circulate of a place with more gold
01:12than anyone had ever heard of.
01:15Spanish conquistadors called it El Dorado
01:17and searched for it for centuries.
01:19Spanish conquistadors.
01:21To them, it wasn't a myth.
01:24They believed it was real
01:25because of the astonishing amounts of gold
01:28they really did find in South America.
01:34Hi, I'm Josh Bernstein.
01:36Nowhere was there more gold than here in Cusco, Peru,
01:39the capital of the Inca Empire.
01:43During the 15th century,
01:45the Incas built the largest, richest empire
01:48in pre-colonial America.
01:49It stretched for some 3,000 miles,
01:52from what's now Ecuador to Chile.
01:58The emperor of this vast kingdom
02:00was worshipped as a descendant of the sun,
02:03the god of the Incas.
02:05He was surrounded in luxury,
02:07and every day he was dressed in golden ornaments.
02:12To the Spaniards, who heard tales of his riches,
02:15his gold was their dream come true.
02:21When the Spanish first came to Cusco,
02:23they found temples coated with gold.
02:26Effigies, ornaments, jewelry, clothing,
02:29everything was gold.
02:30The Incas seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of them.
02:36But the gold was never enough for the conquistadors.
02:42Rumors of a golden city hidden in the jungle
02:45became an obsession.
02:49Even today, it lures treasure seekers
02:51to risk their lives in search of it.
03:01Why does the legend of El Dorado have so much power?
03:05Could there be any truth to it?
03:07There's no better place to find answers to these questions
03:10than here in Cusco.
03:12In this city today, signs of the Spanish conquest are everywhere.
03:18But Cusco is built on Inca foundations,
03:21and you don't have to look very hard to find them.
03:24They say the Inca were the greatest stonemasons
03:26of the ancient world.
03:27And it's easy to see why.
03:29And you see how perfectly they cut and join
03:32these massive stones together.
03:36But has the gold survived as well as the Inca walls?
03:41To find out, I'm meeting Peter Frost,
03:44an historian who's lived in Cusco for 30 years.
03:48Peter takes me to the Spanish cathedral,
03:50built with the riches of the conquest.
03:53I've never seen so much gold.
03:55The altar is covered with it.
03:57This is where a lot of the gold ended up.
03:59A lot of it did, yes.
04:01You had a huge accumulation of Inca gold.
04:07Twenty percent of it went to the king in Spain.
04:10That was his tax.
04:12That was his cut of the loot of the conquest.
04:14And you had individual conquistadors taking their share.
04:19And many of them donated large amounts of their share to the church
04:23because they were very pious Catholics.
04:25And much of it ended up in these imposing gold leaf altars
04:31in the Spanish churches that was fabulously impressive
04:34to anybody who saw them at the time.
04:36And a good deal of the point of that was to impress the natives
04:40with the power of Spanish religion.
04:43It was an astute move on the part of the Spaniards.
04:48They knew that gold was sacred to the Incas,
04:51who used it to create beautiful objects in honor of their god, the sun.
04:58But gold had a very different meaning for the conquistadors.
05:04Most of these beautiful objects were melted down by the Spanish.
05:08To the Spanish it was bullion that was turned into coins and ingots.
05:12So the Incas who were alive at this time had to watch their sacred relics
05:16being melted down for the Spanish.
05:17Indeed they did.
05:18They saw their meaning, their cosmology, their religious symbols
05:23being stripped away and disappearing, melting, melted down.
05:28It was a major trauma for them, part of the trauma of the conquest.
05:32And it was a great deal.
05:35As Peter leads me around the church,
05:37I continue to be amazed by the amount of gold that's here.
05:41Yet it's only a fraction of what the Inca ruler possessed.
05:44He was the sole owner of the empire's gold.
05:47So he received regular tributes from conquered lands.
05:51Well, in today's money it was mega millions of dollars.
05:54It was a staggering fortune in those times.
05:58A staggering fortune that was taken by people who were poor.
06:03I mean, they were nobodies, these conquistadors,
06:05in their own country at the time.
06:07And suddenly overnight they were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.
06:12It was an extraordinary story.
06:14How does this fit into the legend of El Dorado?
06:17Well, the way I see it, El Dorado was the dream of the have-nots
06:22because the first wave of conquistadors made fabulous fortunes.
06:27These stories came back to Spain and to Central America
06:30where the Spanish had already been for a while
06:32and people started flooding down here.
06:35It was like a gold rush in a way.
06:36But where was the gold?
06:37Now most of it was in the hands of conquistadors
06:41who had already taken the major share.
06:44So the next guys had to have a dream to live on for.
06:51What Peter's saying is that the legend of El Dorado persisted
06:54because the conquistadors desperately wanted to believe in it.
06:59Likewise, the Inca version of the story continued to evolve
07:03long after the Spanish invasion of 1532.
07:07The legend goes that the Incas saved some of their treasures
07:12and retreated to this mythical city somewhere in the rainforest.
07:17All these myths have survived and there may be some truth in those legends.
07:23There are so many layers to the legend of El Dorado,
07:26it's no wonder it's taken on a life of its own.
07:29And now I've just heard that there's something more.
07:32A recent discovery that's giving explorers new hope
07:35that El Dorado is more than a myth.
07:39Luckily, I've been able to catch up with a seasoned explorer named Greg Diarmenji.
07:43Greg works as a psychologist in Boston.
07:46But for the past 20 years, he spent much of his free time in the jungles of Peru
07:50on the trail of El Dorado.
07:53So what is it that's gotten everyone so excited about El Dorado again?
07:56This has. What is that?
07:58This is a copy of a letter recently discovered in the Vatican archives
08:02written by a Jesuit priest in the mid-1500s.
08:05And what does it say about El Dorado?
08:08It describes a journey of Indians of that era to the kingdom of Paititi.
08:16And what is Paititi?
08:18Paititi is said to be the Incan city of gold beyond Cusco.
08:25So the Incas also believed in a city of gold beyond Cusco.
08:29Could this be the same place the Spaniards called El Dorado?
08:35The Incas believed that they were descendants of a great hero called Incare.
08:40He rose from the waters of Lake Titicaca to found Cusco
08:44and then ended his days in Paititi, deep in the jungle.
08:48When the Spaniards heard this story, they began to search for Paititi,
08:52believing it must be the real El Dorado.
08:55They never found it.
08:59Now, Greg says this letter gives credence to the idea that Paititi was a real place.
09:05And the letter describes it as rich in gold.
09:08Maybe El Dorado really did exist.
09:11So if we were to follow the instructions, where is Paititi?
09:15We can follow the direction to the northeast
09:19and we can get a lot of clues from this document that we didn't previously have.
09:24Northeast of Cusco.
09:26Northeast of Cusco, yes.
09:28Where would that put it on a map?
09:29It would put it an indefinite distance in this direction,
09:33but it would take us through the Pantiacoya area,
09:37the area most frequently associated with Paititi in local Peruvian legend.
09:43Much of the Pantiacoya is dense jungle, largely unexplored.
09:47In the south of it is a series of strange formations called the Pyramids of Parutuari.
09:53Greg was the first to explore them in 1996.
09:56At the time, he wasn't able to fully determine whether they're natural or man-made.
10:01So he says they're definitely worth more study.
10:04But he cautions that they're very hard to reach.
10:07It's a torturous kind of terrain in that it's so covered with dense vegetation, moss, ravines, dense cloud forest, high
10:18altitude jungle, lower altitude jungle, unnavigable rivers,
10:22such that traveling there is one difficulty after another.
10:26But if I wanted to go on a search and take an expedition out there, could you help me organize
10:30that?
10:30Absolutely.
10:31Yeah?
10:32Yeah.
10:32Pretty good adventure, huh?
10:34Absolutely.
10:34Greg's gotten me excited about the possibility of finding Paititi.
10:37But he has a lot of preparations to make first.
10:40Our journey will cover a broad range of territory, from mountains to rivers to thick jungles few have penetrated.
10:48Sounds like a real adventure.
10:50Meanwhile, I'm heading off on a mini expedition of my own.
10:53I know why the Spaniards wanted gold, but I want to know more about what it meant to the Incas.
11:00You're watching Digging for the Truth on the History Channel.
11:04I'm on a quest to find El Dorado, the legendary city of gold.
11:10I've learned that here in Peru, it's called Paititi, and that it may be more than just a legend.
11:15In Cusco, I saw a 16th century letter that suggests the city is a real place.
11:22Before I go in search of it, I'm headed for Lake Titicaca, the sacred lake of the Incas.
11:27It's long been associated with legends of gold.
11:32Wow.
11:33This is Lake Titicaca.
11:36It's breathtaking.
11:37Literally.
11:38At close to 13,000 feet above sea level.
11:42I can barely breathe.
11:45It's going to take my body a few days to acclimatize.
11:50Yet I'm anxious to get into the water.
11:52I've heard that the Incas actually sacrificed golden treasures to this lake 500 years ago.
11:58Why would they sacrifice something so valuable?
12:01I'm wondering if there's any evidence left to be found at the bottom of the lake.
12:04There's only one way to find out.
12:08That's where we're going to dive.
12:09Diving at this altitude is a real challenge.
12:11Almost nobody dives in Titicaca.
12:14But my guide, Gustavo Villavicencio, has a real passion for underwater archaeology, despite the dangers.
12:22High-altitude diving has a whole different set of risks associated with it.
12:25At 13,000 feet, the atmospheric pressure is less than half of what it is at sea level.
12:29That makes scuba much more dangerous.
12:32So, for us to be safe, we're being conservative with our bottom time.
12:37Yeah, we're very conservative.
12:38So we'll spend a little less time than the dive table shows because of the altitude.
12:41Because of the altitude, yeah.
12:42And we also have to consider that the water is very cold here.
12:45We've got 90 degrees Celsius here.
12:47It's cold water, right?
12:48Yeah, it's cold water, yeah.
12:49Okay, so I've dived in like the Caribbean and the Pacific where it's warm.
12:52This is my first cold water, high-altitude dive.
12:55Yeah, this is your first very cold water.
12:58Very cold water.
12:59Looking forward to it.
13:00Right.
13:00Okay.
13:03In 2004, an expedition with a remote submersible sighted a gold icon in this lake that weighed an estimated 77
13:11pounds.
13:12So there's probably a lot more to be found.
13:15But diving here is going to be very tricky.
13:18I'm a little apprehensive.
13:20I've never done high-altitude diving.
13:21I've never done super cold water winter diving.
13:26And I see that Gustavo's wearing a dry suit.
13:28And I'm not.
13:29So, he may know something I don't.
13:31But you're tough.
13:32I'm tough?
13:33You're tougher than I am.
13:34Well, we'll see how it goes.
13:35But yeah, I'm a little nervous.
13:37The whole altitude thing, I'm not sure how that's going to go.
13:4013,000 feet and we're going scuba diving.
13:43We'll see.
13:53That is cold!
13:55You aren't kidding!
13:59The first shock feels like diving into a bucket of ice.
14:03And at 48 degrees Fahrenheit, this isn't that far from the truth.
14:07But I force myself to adjust, moving and breathing very slowly.
14:14I start looking for the glint of gold.
14:20Over the centuries, anything old would have settled deep into the bottom.
14:28Every rock or tuft of grass could hide something precious.
14:33But I'm not going to find it without lots of effort.
14:41The seconds tick by.
14:43We can only stay down for 25 minutes.
14:50Now I understand why most expeditions take weeks to find anything here.
14:55There must be an easier way to determine why the Incas sacrificed gold to this lake.
15:01We don't want to outstay our welcome.
15:05Gold would have been nice, but this has been a beautiful day.
15:09Definitely, definitely an adventure worth doing.
15:14The next day, we head out again.
15:17Knowing my interest in the lake's history, Gustavo takes me to a sacred island.
15:22He points out sanctuaries built from rocks and says that worshipers would gather here as the sun rose over the
15:28lake to honor the sun god.
15:31So, who made this?
15:33This is pre-Incas, Tiahuanaco, possibly.
15:35They're old. They've been here for a long time.
15:38They've been here for a thousand years.
15:39And if we were here a thousand years ago, right here, looking at this sanctuary, what would be going on?
15:44What would we see?
15:45We would see a bunch of people and pray and throw pottery and sometimes gold, stone carved boxes.
15:54And they'd put gold idols inside and just throw them to the lake.
15:57They would actually throw gold into these waters?
15:58That's right.
15:59Wow.
16:03So even long before the Incas, ancient Peruvians were sacrificing gold into this lake.
16:10Gold was a symbol of their god, the sun.
16:15No wonder its value to them was spiritual, not monetary.
16:20I also find out that Lake Titicaca is even more important to my quest than I realized.
16:26Because it's here, in the sacred high lakes of the Andes, that the legend of El Dorado actually began.
16:37Native people told stories of a great king who rode a golden raft into the lake.
16:44The king was so rich that he was covered in gold dust from head to toe.
16:50He would bathe in the lake and make golden offerings to the gods.
16:57The Spaniards called the king El Dorado, which means the golden one.
17:06As the legend spread and caught fire, the golden king became a golden city.
17:12But it's this story that inspired one of the world's most enduring obsessions.
17:27I'm on the trail of El Dorado, the legendary city of gold the Incas called Paitini.
17:34In Cusco, Greg Diarmenjian showed me a 400-year-old letter that describes it as a real place, ten days'
17:41journey from Cusco.
17:43At Lake Titicaca, I discovered the origins of the myth, and why the Indians would sacrifice their gold to the
17:49lake.
17:50Stories of the Incas' incredible wealth reached the Spanish conquistadors, who journeyed to Peru.
17:56What they found was even more amazing than their wildest dreams.
18:02What's the Coricantia?
18:04I'm meeting Peter Frost again in Cusco.
18:07He says I'll understand more when I see what's left of the Coricantia.
18:11The main Inca temple dedicated to worshiping the sun.
18:15This wall was the outer wall of the Temple of the Sun, and it's a marvel of architecture.
18:19It's extraordinary fitting of the stone and the curve.
18:22Peter tells me that the Spaniards often built their churches on top of native temples.
18:26It was part of their effort to convert the Incas.
18:31In this case, even more of the Inca temple was preserved inside the church.
18:36Peter, what would this place have looked like during Incan times?
18:39Well, it would have been dazzling, awe-inspiring, covered in gold.
18:43Everywhere you looked, there would have been sheets of gold on the walls.
18:46There were certainly golden ornaments and gold decoration, gold wall cladding.
18:53So this whole wall would have been covered in gold?
18:56Very probably, yes.
18:58And there would be like gold effigies here?
19:00Yeah.
19:00It would have been shining, full of light, really impressive.
19:06It was gold's ability to catch the rays of the sun that led the Incas to consider it sacred.
19:11They learned to shape the metal into beautiful patterns.
19:15But they never considered its monetary value until the arrival of the Spaniards in 1532.
19:26The conquistadors were led by an illiterate hustler named Francisco Pizarro.
19:33He was obsessed by the dream of El Dorado.
19:38Unscrupulous and crafty, he lured the Inca emperor into meeting with him, unarmed.
19:45It was a fatal mistake.
19:50What happened to all the gold?
19:52Well, when the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro entered the Inca emperor, he captured the Inca emperor.
20:00And the Inca emperor offered to fill a room full of gold and two rooms full of silver in exchange
20:06for his freedom.
20:07So Pizarro captures the Incan king and holds him for ransom.
20:10That's right.
20:12Pizarro doubted the ransom could be fulfilled.
20:15But he gave Atahualpa two months for the gold to reach the line on the wall of his cell.
20:20He sent some of his own men to help collect the loot.
20:24Pizarro sends four men down to Cusco where they know there's a huge stash of gold here.
20:30They come into the Coricancha and this is what they see.
20:33And with their own bare hands, they strip this extraordinary treasure and send it back to be melted down.
20:39These four Spanish soldiers, they come in here and they're seeing this place is just covered with gold.
20:43I'm trying to imagine it. It's just gold everywhere.
20:45There was a garden of gold here with flowers and ears of corn, potatoes.
20:54They're made of gold and silver. Animals too.
20:57And they just scooped the whole lot up and took it off.
21:02For weeks, the gold arrived in Atahualpa's cell from all corners of the Inca empire.
21:10But as the pile grew, Pizarro became apprehensive at the thought of letting his captive free.
21:16He decided to go back on his word and kill Atahualpa before the ransom was complete.
21:26The Spaniards destroyed the cultural treasures of the Incas.
21:30They melted the gold into ingots and divided the spoils.
21:39But legend has it that some treasure never reached the Spaniards before Atahualpa was killed.
21:46It's said that the Incas themselves took it away into the jungle, to the city called Paititi.
21:54No wonder the conquistadors kept looking for it.
22:02This gives me even more reason to head off into the jungle myself.
22:05It's good to see you again.
22:07Hi.
22:07Justice Paulino.
22:09And I've got a great team.
22:11Greg Diarmengian and his partner, Paulino Mamani, worked together on their first expedition to the pyramids of Paratuari.
22:18The letter Greg showed me places Paititi ten days' travel from Cusco.
22:23Drawing on his knowledge of Inca lore, Greg believes that if the city exists,
22:28it's most likely northeast of Cusco, beyond the town of Choque Cancha.
22:32It's a wild, unexplored region, which includes the mysterious pyramids of Paratuari.
22:40The Incas in the letter would have traveled by foot to Paititi.
22:44400 years later, it's impossible to duplicate their journey.
22:48But Greg says we're probably pretty close.
22:51Well, we're going through the sacred valley and Choque Cancha, which means gold enclosure,
22:56the far outpost of the Inca Empire.
22:58It would have been there that people would have gone towards the eastern edges,
23:02the northern eastern edges of the Incan Empire.
23:04So if we were here during Incan times, we're now...
23:07We'd be passing through the periphery into the uncharted territories.
23:10Yes, exactly.
23:11And this valley that we're in now, would they have traveled through this?
23:13Sure.
23:14This is well-traveled in the Incan times.
23:16Really?
23:16The sacred valley.
23:18This valley is called sacred because it's where the Inca royalty lived.
23:24And I don't blame them.
23:26The scenery is spectacular.
23:32The hillsides are still terraced for farming, the way the Incas laid them out.
23:38In fact, the landscape seems to have changed very little since the Spanish conquest.
23:44Inca descendants still farm and herd goats and llamas, just like their ancestors did 600 years ago.
23:56We passed several Inca ruins.
23:58There's 30 walls still impressive.
24:01I can't help but wonder about the great civilization that once flourished here,
24:05and what it might have accomplished if the Spaniards had never dreamed of El Dorado.
24:17It's 100 miles to Choquecancha, where we'll leave the van behind.
24:22This road is so full of switchbacks, it'll take us three and a half hours to get there.
24:27But I just as soon we take our time on roads like this.
24:38You know, one thing I'm wondering about, in terms of El Dorado and Paititi, is where would all the gold
24:42come from?
24:43Are there gold in the hills out here?
24:44Yeah, but they had such a large quantity of gold, it had to come from elsewhere.
24:48And many of the jungle areas provided gold to the Incas.
24:52And is it alluvial gold on the surface, or do you have to actually mine for it?
24:56Both kinds, but most of it would be on the surface.
24:59Really? So we might see some?
25:00We might.
25:01That'd be exciting.
25:02If we find some, can we keep it?
25:09After a few hours, it begins to feel as if we're getting to the edge of civilization.
25:14In Inca times, this far eastern part of the empire was called the Antisuyo.
25:20It was wild and uncharted, just as it is today.
25:28We pull into Choque Cancha in the late afternoon.
25:31Looks like they're ready for us.
25:33I'm drawn to the stone walls along the edge of the square.
25:37You don't get this kind of fine architecture in these remote, remote areas,
25:41unless it's indicating something very important.
25:44Greg tells me these walls mark the northeastern boundary of the Incan Empire.
25:49Beyond them lay the frontier and the fabled city of Paititi.
25:53So beyond this, it's just a llama ride into the jungle.
25:57Right?
25:58We'll take the llamas, but the llamas won't go in the jungle themselves.
26:01They won't.
26:02But we will.
26:03Will we ride them? No. They just walk with us?
26:06They're new to llama riding. They're llama tricking.
26:08So I guess we just, they carry some of this stuff.
26:10But actually, why don't we go over there and show me how it works, okay?
26:16Are llamas friendly creatures?
26:18They're kind of skittish.
26:19They're kind of skittish, yeah.
26:21You have to get to know them.
26:25We got a wild one.
26:27Llamas have been the pack animals of the Andes for millennia.
26:31But I find out that they're not very strong.
26:33They can only carry about 80 pounds.
26:36And even that, not for long.
26:38So when one gets tired, you move the pack to another.
26:44Dumping llamas.
26:45Okay, sounds a little bit fidgety.
26:49The llamas are ready, and so are we.
26:57The scenery is fantastic up on these high ridges.
27:01I'm used to the Rockies, but the Andes are a whole new experience in mountain trekking.
27:07Being followed by a bunch of llamas.
27:09Uh-oh.
27:10They're gaining on us.
27:11They're gaining on me.
27:14My body is finally getting used to the high altitude.
27:17Greg, how high are we now?
27:19We're about 9,500 feet.
27:21So we're below Cusco and way below Titicaca.
27:24Yeah, yeah.
27:25That's nice.
27:25It's nice to be able to breathe again.
27:27Absolutely, yeah.
27:28It's high enough, though.
27:30The trail we're following is really old, but still in pretty good shape.
27:35So Greg, this is part of the Inca Trail, isn't it?
27:37Yeah.
27:37This is part of an Inca network of trails from Choque Cancha to the north and to the east of
27:43here.
27:43So this isn't the Inca Trail that people think of Machu Picchu, but it's an Incan Trail.
27:47Right.
27:49I find out that the Incas were in some ways just like the Roman.
27:52Towards the east.
27:54They united their empire with roads.
27:57The Incas built more than 15,000 miles apart.
28:03Messengers called Chastis carried news and parcels from one corner of the empire to the other.
28:11A team of these runners could carry fresh fish from the Pacific to the emperor's table in Cusco almost 300
28:18miles in a single day.
28:26In fact, Greg tells me that the Inca roads were so good that a journey to Paititi today could actually
28:32take longer than it did 400 years ago.
28:35Even with our head start in the van.
28:40We descend until we lose the last of the light.
28:44This part of the journey feels like the peaceful calm before a storm.
28:50I know that the jungle will be a lot harder.
28:53Many explorers have lost their lives in that dense, unmapped terrain.
29:05I'm on an expedition to find Paititi, the Peruvian El Dorado that obsessed the conquistadors for centuries.
29:12My journey was sparked by the discovery of a letter describing a similar trip to Paititi by a group of
29:18Incas 400 years ago.
29:23Our expedition leader, Greg Diermenjian, has determined that the lost city, if it can be found, lies in the dense
29:29jungles of the Pantikoya.
29:31In the southern part of that forbidding territory is a series of strange mounds called the Pyramids of Paratuari.
29:38That's our destination.
29:41To get there, we'll be traveling through one of the least explored jungles on the planet.
29:46The llamas were great in the highlands, but here in the lowlands it's way too hot, and they'd only slow
29:51us down.
29:52From here, our search for El Dorado will be in the jungles of the Amazon.
29:56To get there, we'll go by boat.
30:00Hey, Paulino!
30:01Joining our expedition is Darwin Moscoso, a local expert on these jungle rivers.
30:07That's why we have to move quick, because it's a long way.
30:10The boat's long-tailed outboard is specially adapted to the shallow streams further on in the jungle.
30:18What's this boat called? The Pequi Pequi?
30:20Pequi Pequi. It's a single cylinder. Pequi Pequi Pequi. That's why.
30:26In the jungle.
30:44The distance we still have to travel is about 17 miles as the crow flies.
30:49You've done this before, right?
30:52But in the jungle, distance can be meaningless.
30:56Making your way through here is like forging a path through an endless maze.
31:01To get towards where Paititi might be, we take this larger river to a smaller river,
31:06and then eventually we just have to get out in bushwhack.
31:08Yep.
31:09Smells like a plane.
31:19That's right.
31:21Darwin, have you heard of Paititi?
31:24Yeah, I was trying to find it.
31:26You were looking for it?
31:27Yeah, no, I was looking for 10 years.
31:29For 10 years?
31:3010 years, yeah.
31:31Each time, each expedition is for one, two, three, and four months.
31:37In many ways, Greg and Darwin seem just as obsessed as the conquistadors in their search for El Dorado.
31:44At first, I wonder what keeps them looking.
31:46But then I hear the story that inspires all Peruvian explorers.
31:52It was 1911, high in the Andes northwest of Cusco, about 100 miles from where we are now.
32:01Hiram Bingham, a 35-year-old professor, was searching for a lost Inca city.
32:06After weeks of fruitless trekking through dense jungle, he was led by a native boy to an overgrown ruin on
32:13a mountaintop.
32:15It turned out to be Machu Picchu.
32:22Now, what was once a lost city is celebrated as one of the finest achievements of Inca culture.
32:37It's stories like this that keep explorers heading back into Peru's jungle frontier.
32:42In many ways, as uncharted now as it was 500 years ago.
32:49Yet I can't help but think of the hundreds of explorers who've lost their lives in this jungle.
32:54Killed by hostile natives, wild animals, or rivers that can rise and grow turbulent in a matter of minutes.
33:06We are very long.
33:07Should we pull it?
33:08You want us to get out and pull it?
33:09It isn't long before we hit trouble.
33:15So what do we do now, Darwin?
33:18It's a push time, man.
33:20We have to push.
33:21You know, you say push, we say how hard.
33:23We have to push.
33:24But I think we will take the canal that way.
33:27To the back.
33:28Good.
33:30Okay, uno, dos, tres.
33:44Let's go.
33:46Let's go.
33:49Let's go.
33:49Let's go.
33:50Let's go.
33:51Let's go.
33:51Let's go.
33:51We've got to keep an eye out for stingrays.
33:54Greg says they're all over these waters.
33:57Piranha and poisonous snakes too.
34:04too.
34:05I'm not sorry to get back into the boat.
34:14We're traveling on one of the little tributaries that
34:17branches off the Alto Madre de Dios River.
34:20We're hoping this one will take us up
34:22into the foothills of our search area.
34:26There are dozens of these tributaries,
34:28and Greg, Paulino, and Darwin have explored many of them
34:31in their prior searches for Paititi.
34:35It feels as if we're going deeper and deeper
34:38into a primeval jungle wilderness, an environment
34:42completely untouched by humans.
34:46Yet Greg has found ruins not far from here,
34:49so he's sure that this area is a prime candidate for Paititi.
34:55It's back to pushing.
35:00But now the river is little more than a stream.
35:03We've got to slash our way through.
35:17We try several tributaries.
35:19The end result is always the same.
35:24Uno, dos, tres.
35:26Ah!
35:28Uno, dos, tres.
35:32Uno, dos, tres.
35:34Uno, dos, tres.
35:38Uno, dos, tres.
35:48We have to walk now, because the river is too shallow.
35:51It looks like the end of our run.
35:53The backpacks.
35:55Into the jungle.
35:56From here, we've got to leave the boat behind
35:58and strike out through the jungle on foot.
36:10Now, we're miles from where we'd planned to start bushwhacking.
36:13In a part of the jungle, Greg and the rest of the team don't really know.
36:17Getting to our search area near the pyramids of Paitiwari will require every last ounce of energy.
36:27And in the jungle, every step is fraught with danger.
36:32This is an environment where everything moves, even the plants.
36:40And if it doesn't move, it'll bite, sting...
36:44Watch out for this one.
36:45...or stick you.
37:12...if it does not progress.
37:12I'm going to move.
37:13Okay, very fast.
37:13Let's do this.
37:13Let's go.
37:13Let's go.
37:13Let's go.
37:14Let's do this.
37:14Let's go.
37:15Let's go.
37:15Let's go.
37:18I think this is nuts.
37:28I'm searching for El Dorado,
37:30the legendary city of gold known as Paititi here in Peru.
37:34A 400-year-old letter describes it as a 10-day journey from Cusco.
37:39Explorer Greg Diermenjian organized an expedition.
37:42We followed the ancient trails of the Incas over the Andes and down into the Amazon jungle.
37:48That's when our journey got challenging.
37:50After repeatedly running aground,
37:52we abandoned our boat and struck out into the jungle on foot, miles before we'd planned to.
37:57We're trying to slash our way through to the Pyramids of Paratuwarri,
38:02to the search area we've identified as the best place to look for Paititi.
38:14Just when I think we have a chance of reaching it, the rain begins.
38:22I know it's a rain forest, but this rain is relentless.
38:28We have to move even slower now, and our optimism is wearing thin.
38:39Now, every step is treacherous.
38:42If one of us twists an ankle or encounters a snake, we're miles from help.
38:59We're finding it hard to see even 10 feet in front of us.
39:04Greg says that the jungle around the pyramids is so dense,
39:07we could be standing on one of them and not even realizing it.
39:17I think about the Incas and the letter I saw in Cusco.
39:20There's no way of knowing how they reached Paititi,
39:23or even if their story is true or not.
39:27We could search for weeks and miss something just 100 yards away.
39:46I think this is nuts.
39:47I think this is nuts.
39:48I mean, I mean, there could be a city right there, right there, right past it.
39:52I have to run into my...
39:55Come on, man.
39:56Greg, glad we're here.
39:57It could be that in order to advance...
39:59We're going to have to go back, get up on an airplane, get a real view,
40:04plan things from there.
40:05So we could actually get above this.
40:08All right, all right.
40:09We're not going to get through it.
40:10So I think the only way might be to get above it.
40:12That's not the only way to get above it.
40:13Let's try that.
40:14All right.
40:15The jungle has turned out to be a more formidable foe than I imagined.
40:37It's a pretty soggy and dispirited crew that finally finds its way back to the Pequi Pequi.
40:47But there's a glimmer of hope yet.
40:53Turns out the Peruvian Air Force flies these jungles to deliver mail,
40:58to whom I can't imagine.
41:00But tribes do live in some of the most remote parts of the Amazon.
41:04We may not have been able to reach the pyramids on foot,
41:07but it looks like the Air Force is willing to give us a bird's-eye view.
41:20They agree to take the door off the plane and slow it down,
41:23to let us study the terrain more closely.
41:27The crew's mood has definitely improved.
41:43It goes on for hundreds of miles.
41:55There's one tributary after another.
41:58I wonder how many lead to dead ends like the ones we encounter.
42:02It goes on for hundreds of miles.
42:04It goes on for hundreds of miles.
42:08Suddenly, I see something unusual.
42:11Huge mounds that rise up in a way that doesn't look natural.
42:30I'm dying to get down there and explore them.
42:33But they're so choked with jumble I can barely make them out.
42:37Greg spent four days here and wasn't able to finish examining.
42:42Elena and I went there in 1996.
42:46The first of the weeks that we saw on foot and investigate.
42:49We explored a large part of it.
42:51Found, found, most likely natural.
42:54But the parts of it still need to be explored.
42:58We may have been back here one day.
43:00It's the only way to know for sure to be there on foot.
43:07There's no place to land.
43:09I have to face it.
43:11This is as close as I'm going to get to those mysterious pyramids.
43:14At least for now.
43:15They're great!
43:16They're great!
43:17Okay, yes, yes!
43:20Greg says that the pyramids are probably a natural formation.
43:24But there's still a small chance that they could be man-made.
43:27Maybe even a remnant of a lost city like Paititi.
43:32In any case, just this glimpse has given me a whole new perspective
43:37on what keeps the legend of El Dorado alive.
43:45For centuries, it was greed for gold that led the conquistadors to risk their lives in Peru's jungles.
43:53But for the explorers of today, it isn't gold.
43:58It's the thrill of discovery.
44:01It's finding something that's been lost to history and restoring its wonder for all to appreciate.
44:10That's a thrill I can understand.
44:40For more information!
44:43The
44:50You
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