Their disappearance is one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century in the field of exploration. He was one of the models on which Indiana Jones was created and inspired The Lost World of Conan Doyle. Up comes an album of Tintin. Lawrence of Arabia once wanted to accompany him (but two similar egos would not fit on the Amazon and we stayed without taking Aqaba). "The ideal browser, Michel Le Bris calls it in his indispensable Dictionnaire des amoreux explorateurs (Plon, 2010). Well, one could doubt that an ideal browser can be lost but there are Livingstone, Henry Hudson, John Cabot ...

Fawcett was obsessed with finding a mysterious city called in the middle of the forest of Mato Grosso. That great monuments and city walls which he described simply as Z, to mislead the have built, foolishly thought nothing less than the Atlanteans. Born in Torquay, Devon, our man, a kind-looking, tall and brave, he joined the Royal Artillery. He was assigned to Ceylon, where he discovered the love of archeology and extrasensory enjoyed mystical experiences. I had this weakness for the occult and esoteric things: attended spiritualism and theosophy, was a follower of Madame Blavatsky and even used the ouija board to decide where to shoot their shells. After working as a spy in North Africa was signed by the Royal Geographic Society to explore for cartographic blank areas on maps in order to resolve the border dispute between Brazil and Bolivia. He did great and I grew very fond of forest. Between 1906 and 1924 made seven expeditions (see her through the Amazon jungle, Zeta, 2008) and found the headwaters of the Verde. Braved mortal danger and great hardship. It was very hard with his companions, almost ruthless. And could not stand cowards. I can not fail to note here that it was the first white man to see an anaconda.

His colonel type Sting strange theory that if you are sympathetic to indigenous Amazonian they'll be with you, which is quite risky: sometimes you stick a shaft six feet wet with curare before you can express all your gift people. In fact the pilot of the River Chocolate Fawcett left him made a pincushion: 42 arrows. It is true that once the browser saved his game when, before a group of hostile Indians, put one of his companions to play the accordion Onward christian soldiers. Fawcett is also noted as a guy agonizingly dug a candiru the urethra (the lucky fish was not going to be missing from this chronicle), famous for clinging irrevocably, alas, into the penis of any unfortunate swimmer Amazon.

Rumors of a fabulous city in the jungle had its origin apparently in the story of a Portuguese sailor in 1500 who heard his captors Jerusalem artichoke, hungry cannibals in his case made an exception in exchange for the daughter to marry your boss (which must surely be cause for revocation). It is difficult to gauge the strength of the Tupinamba as informants, and did I tell you as gourmets. In any case, the colonel was an old map of Z. After a break in her career explorer to take part in World War I (was in the Somme and was wounded with gas), in 1925, 58, accompanied only by his offspring Jack and son of a friend, Fawcett head stuck in the jungle of the upper Xingu and never been heard of him or the other (or many others who tried to find it is estimated that one hundred, including several freaks, have palmately suffer because of worm-the candiru, why not, "Fawcett).

Let me return at this point my personal experience and noting that, incomparably less skilled in affairs of the jungle, I came back. The credit's not mine but from an Indian named Casimiro, thanks pemón here, Casimiro, who was kind enough to turn back and find myself sobbing with horror a bromeliad. "Lost!, The word that triggers tremendous madness," wrote Romulo Gallegos in My Canaima. There I was, precisely, in Canaima National Park Venezuela. We had left a group of canoe trip (canoe) to the Auyantepuy, whose top falls Angel falls. Navigate the rapids of the Carrao and Churun. After beaching the boat we walked in single file through the jungle of vines between trees strangled when I stopped a moment to admire a hummingbird flying looked like a sapphire. It was just a reckless moment of forgetfulness but I was completely alone in the jungle. No one was visible. I knocked, louder and louder until finishing hitting screams like Klaus Kinski. I thought of running on either side but I managed to calm down enough to stay put and avoid losing even more. The jungle was a vast green of exasperating monotony and overwhelming indifference. My terrified imagination populated by jaguars, alligators, snakes and blowguns jararaca, not to mention the anacondas and the candiru. There was a time to remember that the park Canaima is the size of Belgium and has no signs. When Casimiro gave me I was in such a state that did not seem to know if it was me or the silent remains of tapir that had caught the night before with his old shotgun.

From that trauma jungle boots, I say, my line with Fawcett. Know nothing about their fate. Did you find your city? There imagination who include many stories and legends of an old white man glimpsed in the jungle, which is there at the Shangri La lush, perhaps enthroned as king or god. There has been talk of Indian children with white skin that would be their children or grandchildren. In an excellent book recently in which the film is based will star Brad Pitt, "Lost City of Z (Plaza & Janes, 2010), the New Yorker journalist David Grann, who had access to personal diaries from the colonel, traces the history of Fawcett and his adventures and his own part to the Amazon in search of the browser, or at least his memory, guided by an old samba dancer (!). He could see the skeletal remains and conserving Kalapalo attributed to our man, but do not add up. Grann believes, based on recent archaeological discoveries of large structures in the Amazon jungle city that Fawcett was not so wrong: it is possible that there was a large pre-Columbian civilization in the jungles of the Xingu with settlements of up to five thousand people and some monumental aesthetic.

In any case, the browser has never returned. Remains, by returning a mirror image strangely moving. Because we all be lost in one way or another. If you want to know the truth, a part of me also continues in the jungle, bewildered and indecisive, unable to find a way out or even just looking for her. As Fawcett, it is sometimes difficult to find the way home.

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