In 1947, an OSS agent, US Army Col. Leonard Clark, bought a secret map from the descendants of the sole surviving soldier of an Amazonian army outpost massacre by Jivaro Indians almost 500 years ago. This map identified seven “Cities of Gold” in the northern Amazon jungle that Clark believed to be the legendary “El Dorado”.
Clark set out from Lima with a Peruvian university student as his jungle guide and $1000 in cash to emerge 9 months later from the northern Andes with $16,000 in gold strapped to the back of a mule. However, some of his friends were now dead and he had barely been lucky and resourceful enough to escape his own demise from lethal snakes, jaguars, boiling rapids and arrows from the legendary Campa slvetraders and Aguarunas headshrinkers that inhabited the upper Maranon River valley.
Nearly sixty years have passed since his legendary journey into the uncharted Amazon, but has anyone really investigated his findings? Was he telling the truth about the gold and the hostile conditions he encountered? What really did he find?
Equally at home in Peru, the mountains, or Seattle, Washington, Tammy Leland has spent the last 18 years exploring every nook and cranny of Peru’s Amazon, its Andes mountains, Southern desert and ancient history. Earning a reputation as a passionate adventurer and explorer, Tammy had wandered over 5 continents, spending her time learning from different indigenous cultures, gleaning important lessons about sustainable tourism and now offers practical guidance as a tourism consultant and environmental educator.
Living on the edge explorer, traveler and climber, Dan Travers has traversed, climbed, scaled, scrambled, skied, trudged, trekked, hiked, biked and kayaked in 6 different continents and over 40 countries. Wilderness First Responder trained and a jungle veteran, lacrosse player, beer drinker, trekker and traveler, diver and climber, but not dancer nor singer. "I want to experience all I can, because if you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space."