Arthur Francis Tyde III

About 5 years ago world famous athlete and adventurer Dr. Bo Keeley and I led a group of Silicon Valley executives on a 7 day cross country ride on the freights. Starting in the Union Pacific yard just outside Sacramento we jumped freight trains to Aspen Colorado and attended the annual Eris Society gathering. While gliding across the Nevada desert at night with data uplinks, night vision equipment and satellite tracking gear may not be everyones idea of a great vacation we all had a big time. This year I was planning a cross country motorcycle trip until a rather unique email arrived from the venerable Dr. Keeley.

"Am I interested in a trek through Peru to investigate what could be the ruins of a lost city not unlike Machu Pichu led by noted scholar, archaeologist and anthrobotanist Peter Gorman?"

Plans are in place for an investigation of the Pyramids of Paratoari, in the Madre De Dios region of Peru. The pyramids, discovered by a Landsat ll satellite in 1975, figure into the lore of several indigenous groups in the area but have yet to be researched. It has not even known whether the 12 structures in two parallel lines of six, are man-made or a geological formation. I wouldn't describe Peter as a treasure hunter, but in terms of a real life Indiana Jones it doesn't get any closer. While this is a very tempting adventure, in the eve of my youth, I prefer to travel in relative comfort. Up front and personal experiences with malaria, botfly infestations, ants, rats, spiders, and vampire bats are lessons I can learn from a book. On the other hand, in university I was an anthropology student for many years. I believe that Paratoari holds a key to the actual location of El Dorado, not a city, but the last attempt by the Muisca Confederation to protect it's religious assets from Spanish looters. The last serious attempt to search for El Dorado was undertaken by Francisco de Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro (1541), who passed down the Rio Napo to the valley of the Amazon all the way to its delta. Water plays an important part of the legend, and all I can say about my theory is that if successful we'll need an experienced dive team and a private army. Which leads to the funding questions – if you actually did find tons of buried treasure, how the hell do you transport the stuff. Here in the Philippines, people are still looking around for buried Japanese gold and projects get funded all the time to investigate shipwrecks. Speak with Peter Gorman, there is a Ft. Knox out there somewhere in the amazon and our funky team may be the best bet at finding it... but we'll need serious infrastructure support.