"(SL0W DRUMBEAT)" "Trujillo, Spain." "In the early 16th century two boys grew up here, dreaming of gold and conquest," "But when they left Spain for the New World, they became deadly enemies in one of the epic dramas of history the search for El Dorado," "(TRAIN'S KLAX0N BL0WS)" "This is the old route from the Pacific up to Quito in Ecuador," "In the 1530s and '40s, it was travelled by adventurers and conquistadors, all hoping for riches beyond their dreams," "Even at the time, there were those among the Spanish conquerors who realised the immense historical significance of the fall of the New World." ""These are the greatest events," wrote one of them, "since the beginning of the world."" "And the most cataclysmic of them took place in just a few years, 1520s, the fall of the Aztecs, and then the fall of Peru in the 1530s." "And then the story shifts here to Ecuador, as thousands of Europeans flood into the continent, seeking new lands of gold." "Among them was a Spanish captain called Francisco 0rellana," "A veteran of the Inca wars, 0rellana was to be the hero of one of the most amazing journeys of exploration," "Early in 1541, he came here to Quito," "The old northern capital of the Incas, Quito was now a Spanish frontier town, 0rellana had come to find his cousin, the new governor Gonzalo Pizarro," "Handsome and cruel, Gonzalo was in his early 30s now, the greatest warrior in the New World" "But Gonzalo was a man whose greed had not been satisfied even by the gold of the Incas," "0nly four years after the fall of P eru, Pizarro was dreaming of hew conquests," "From the rooftops of his palace in Quito, he could see the Andes rising to the east," "Early in 1541, a rumour began to sweep the city that beyond the mountains there lay a land richer than Mexico or even Peru," "A land of gold" "The ruler of this land was said to be so rich that he covered himself in gold dust every, day and washed it off each evening," "He was the golden man of El Dorado," ""I was fascinated," said P izarro," ""And I determined to discover that land and to conquer it, "" "And we set out to follow him," "We took an expedition doctor with us, John Colley," "Above 10,000 feet, you get altitude sickness potentially, so where are we at now?" "Yeah, we're coming up to 12,000 feet here." "All through these campaigns, they had to operate at high altitude." "They developed this kind of cotton, thick, quilted cotton armour to fight in the tropics." "But, of course, you're dead on the equator here, but you come to this altitude and you're in serious trouble." "Beyond the peaks, they entered a drenched green world, with streams and waterfalls, which eventually become the Amazon," "They might as well have been wanderers on the surface of an alien planet," "Pizarro's route has never been traced on the ground" "We know that for the first few months, he explored in a vast circle eastwards," "But when his cousin 0rellana joined him, they set off from their camp near Baeza northwards to the River Coca," "(MAN WHISTLES)" "(MAN CALLS 0UT)" " 0K?" " Yeah." "0h, Jesus Christ." "(GR0ANS)" "How many people did Pizarro bring down here?" "It's quite slippery here." "Be careful." "(WHISTLING)" "Are the horses with us?" " (MAN CALLS 0UT)" " Yeah, good." " How many people did he have with him?" " 220 conquistadors." "4,000 native bearers." "200 horses, hundreds of hunting dogs." "Hundreds of llamas to carry gear." "Incredible." "To Pizarro's alarm, his vast army of native bearers was rapidly wasting away," "The Spanish had 4,000 native bearers with them from the highlands, but they all died by the time they reached the plains." "The history books say they were highland people who came down here and couldn't cope, but why should 4,000 have died, do you think?" "Was it malaria?" "Not malaria." "That was something the Spanish brought over with them." "0f course, there were all these other infectious diseases like measles and smallpox and so forth." "But these big waves of epidemics would have been through already, before this expedition set off, so I wonder if there was something else." "We should ask Delphine." "He's the expert." "Starvation, I think." "Delphine." "(SPEAKS SPANISH) 0ur guide Delphine was a man who knows how to survive in the forest," "(B0TH SPEAK SPANISH)" "(TRANSLAT0R) I don't think it's possible to find that much food for that many people, because you can't always rely on the jungle to provide you with food or fruit." "I think it would be impossible to feed them." "Starvation." "You can imagine trying to find food in this area for that huge number of people." "So the 4,000 Indians basically were starved to death." "I presume they'd be the bottom of the feeding chain as well." "And basically left to fend for themselves as things got really tough." ""The terrain was terrible," said P izarro," ""We had to hack our own path through," ""And we were worn out already from the crossing of the Andes, "" "Frustrated and angry Pizarro took it out on his native guides, torturing them, burning them alive and feeding them to his dogs," "Not a man to argue with," "Food was a growing problem, even for the Spaniards," ""In the end, " says Pizarro, "we were forced to eat the buds of a plant like a vine stalk, "" "(SPEAKS SPANISH)" "0nly the little curly bud on the top." "(SPEAKS SPANISH)" "That was before they started eating their precious horses," "At last we reached the first landmark described by the Spanish," "Hidden behind the falls, legend says, was the gold of the Inca Atahualpa," "(SPEAKS SPANISH)" "(TRANSLAT0R) Those who are in touch with nature believe that the spirits exists here." "(SPANISH)" "(TRANSLAT0R) Yes, this is a door to the spiritual world." "The real story of what's behind the falls, not that it's gold as the Spanish believed, but behind there is the entry to the world of the spirits." "Isn't it wonderful?" "Everything the Spanish understand literally that the Indians actually mean metaphorically." ""And so we pushed on through thick forest," Pizarro says," ""hacking with axes and machetes,"" ""0ften it was impossible to get our horses through, "" "See what an effort it is just to hack a path through virgin forest." "You're lucky if you do a mile or two each day." "Can you imagine what this was like for hundreds of people and all their baggage and their animals trying to get their way through this?" "It just doesn't bear thinking about." "At last, after six months in the jungle, they emerged from the Andes foothills and saw this view, an immense flat horizon," "Even with their limited knowledge, they must have known this stretched all the way to the Atlantic," "But how far was that and what lay in between?" "(MICHAEL) The big stones." "There's a branch under there." "They marched on down the Coca," ""There were many days," says Pizarro," ""when we were wading knee-deep, waist-deep or even worse, "" "It's deep." "And still no sign of El Dorado," "By now, seven months in, the army was demoralised" "Many were too sick to move," "Though he hid it from his men, Pizarro was desperate," "0rellana now tried to persuade him to turn back, but Pizarro wouldn 't give up his quest," "He ordered his men to build a boat to carry, the sick and wounded and the heavy gear," "It took his starving troops a month to make, smelting their horseshoes to forge the nails," "But there was an easier way, Using renewable balsa wood, we made a traditional raft with hardwood nails and ropes oo bark," "With this, we hoped to follow Pizarro down the Coca to the River Napo," "It just goes to show." "The Spanish went to all that trouble about getting nails and you only need some hard wood and some soft wood and you can do it without metal." "We'll see if it works." "(SH0UTING)" "It's our brigantine." "I don't think we'll do the full 3,000 miles on that, though." "I don't mind." "Pizarro's army set off again on the 9th of November, 1541, 0f the beauties of the landscape around them, there's no mention in his account," "This is what you never read in the history books." "You never feel the sense of this immense forest, stretching for 2,000 or more miles." "This immense blue sky and this great river." "Even with the boat, progress was painfully slow," "They could still only go as fast as the army, trudging along the bank," "(THUNDER)" "They marched on for 43 days, Christmas came," "By now some of the Spaniards were dying of starvation," "Their Christmas was made even more miserable by the news that a vast uninhabited region lay ahead, where no food was to be found" "It was Pizarro's nightmare," "Mutiny was in the air," "And then 0rellana stepped forward" "That Christmas, in their camp here by the river, the whole expedition deeply depressed by the struggle of the last ten months," "0rellana came up to Pizarro and said, "Look, give me the brigantine, give me the boat," ""and a few canoes, some of the men and I'll go downstream" ""to try and find some food and I'll come back in three or four days."" "Pizarro looked at him and said, "Whatever you think's best."" "0rellana left next day with 57 men," "But within days, so he said later, he realised the current was too strong and he couldn 't go back," ""So we chose what seemed to us the lesser of two evils, " 0rellana said," ""trusting to God we'd go on and follow the river" ""and either die or see what marvels lay ahead"" "What he didn 't know was that ahead of him was the greatest river on earth," "The first few days they passed through an empty landscape, chewing their boots to stay alive, so close to death, they were hallucinating," "Then, on Monday evening, the 8th of January they heard drums, 0rellana landed and nervously went into the forest," "They were the first Europeans to walk in the interior of A mazonia," " Do you think they might be asleep?" " I don't think there's anybody home right now." "They've got their boots right here." "But they're obviously..." "It's closed up." "(SPEAKS SPANISH)" "There's nobody here." "Well, they did run away when 0rellana first landed." "Left their cooking pots and their food." "0rellana's men were starving, so, of course, they stuffed themselves." "The Indians were very nice about it when they came back." "The man's name was Tapui, Nelson Tapui," "He farmed here with his family, pretty much cut off from the outside world" "(SPEAK SPANISH)" "He spoke Quechua, the Inca language," "(SPEAKS QUECHUAN)" "0h, he'll have to talk slower than that." "And language would be the key to 0rellana's survival," "(SPEAKS QUECHUAN)" "He began to put words down in a notebook," "What's the name in Quechuan?" " Lomo." " Lomo." "So yoca is lomo." "That's very..." ""The captain made a point to get to understand the native languages, " says the diary," "And he made his own primer to help him," "So if you ask for good water to drink, to drink." "(SPEAKS QUECHUAN)" "Nelson sent his son up a tree to bring seed pods for us to eat," "The native people here were called Imara," "They gave 0rellana food, too," "They let the Spaniards stay with them for a month to recover their health," "Saved them from death," "(THEY SPEAK QUECHUAN)" "Can I open?" "0K." "I could get into these." "Delicious." " Mmm." " Mmm." "At this moment, 0rellana was still thinking like a conquistador," "He told his hosts that he was claiming them and their land for the King of Spain," "Bye-bye." "But maybe a change was beginning to take place in his mind, for kind treatment of the Indians, he said now, was the right way to follow," "0ver the coming months, 0rellana would make contact with many different Indian peoples," "Some, like Nelson, would feed and shelter him," "Some would try, to kill him," "The mum gives us a smile." "She thought we were aliens at first." "Back upriver, Pizarro was waiting for 0rellana to return, his men now dying around him," "And as the days turned to weeks, he began to suspect that his loyal cousin might have betrayed him," "0rellana's encounter with the Imara had offered hope of survival," "Now he and his men decided to get their story, straight," "They appointed a scribe to put down on paper why they'd deserted P izarro," "And each and every, one of them put his name to it," ""We've travelled 200 leagues through savage jungle," they said." ""We've all seen it with our own eyes." ""We've felt constant fear of losing our lives because of suffering and hunger." ""How much more danger and death would there be were we to turn back now?" ""Therefore we all beg you," they say to 0rellana, "not to ask us to do this." ""And we ask our scribe to write it down." ""And we are all willing to follow you by any other route to save our lives." ""But not to turn back."" "But was 0rellana being quite truthful?" "0r did he hope to claim the secret of El Dorado for himself" "We continued on his track, down the Coca to its junction with the Napo," "Not so long ago, this was just a mission station," "Now the town of Francisco 0rellana is a Wild West place which has boomed with the opening up of the forest to the new conquistadors, the loggers and the oil men," "Just looking round ourselves and seeing the open sewers and dogs running wild and the terrible overcrowding and you suddenly understand why it was that diseases evolved in cities, where there are huge concentrations of people, rather than in the far healthier lifestyle of the jungle." "And this is, I suppose, the second conquisto, isn't it, you know." "First they came looking for gold and El Dorado and now the forests are being plundered." "They've had their rubber and now it's the hardwoods and it's black gold - oil." " Adios, amigo." " Yeah, bye-bye." "When you get to Manaus, remember, if you go swimming, don't have a pee." "And so we said our goodbyes to Dr Colley, 0h, dear." "0ur next leg would take us down the Napo, the conquistadors' river of cinnamon," "Here's to the River Napo." "0rellana sailed on past other great rivers, the Aguarico, the Curaray, down into what is now Peru," ""We made good speed," says the diary," ""Sometimes more than 20 leagues a day, for the river's flow was swift and strong, "" "0rellana was now on one of the main tributaries of the Amazon, heading east through a vast fluid wilderness," "From the air, it's a bewildering maze," "0ut here nature seems to have no bounds," "0rellana and his men must have gazed on the scene, part in wonder, part in terror," "A few days later, they came to a gigantic confluence, the Napo and the Maranon, the beginning of the Amazon proper," "And as 0rellana reached the Maranon, far to the west, Pizarro had finally given up hope of seeing him again and ordered his men to turn back," "There's a shift now in the tone of the expedition diary, kept by the priest, Father Carvajal," "It may be hindsight, but he seems aware now that the journey was turning into an epic of exploration," ""It seemed to us, by our continuing survival," ""that our Lord Jesus was pleased with such a great venture into the unknown," ""For such a feat of discovery, surely might not otherwise have taken place" ""for many centuries into the future,"" "Ah." "Muchas gracias." " (W0MEN SING) - 0K." " Bienvenido a 0rellana." " Muchas gracias." "Buenas noches." "It was here that 0rellana first heard strange stories of a fierce tribe of female warriors, like the Amazons of Greek myth," "(RHYTHMIC F0LK S0NG)" "His contemporaries never believed him, but he always swore the tale was true," "It's a myth which crops up in many places and maybe it's not just a myth," "The Spanish say that when they came down the Amazon, there were all these tribes that were ruled by women and only when they wanted children did they go and raid and get the men and have sex with them and get pregnant" "and then they'd boot the men out." "Are there still..." "Can you still find women like this on the Amazon?" "(W0MAN TRANSLATES)" "(TRANSLAT0R) Ah, dominant." "Yes, there are woman who are dominant." "0f course." "Yes, there are women who have power over the men." "(W0MAN SINGS NATIVE FOLKBALLAD)" "No one knows for sure whether the Amazons really existed" "But they gave the river the name it still has today, Rio Amazonas, the river of the Amazons," "(W0MAN SINGS FOLKBALLAD)" "All the way through what is now Peru, the local people treated these strangers from another world kindly," "But did 0rellana ever see them as fully human like himself" "I think he remained a conquistador," "Nonetheless, he was still carefully recording words from the river languages," "(W0MAN SPEAKS L0CAL DIALECT)" ""Next to God, " says the diary "the captain's understanding of the native languages" ""was the deciding factor in saving us all from death, "" "(THEY SPEAK L0CAL DIALECT)" "0rellana's diary, is the first description of the peoples of A mazonia," ""This part of the river, " he says, "they were part of a great federation, the Aparians, "" "In the two centuries after the coming of the Spanish, 90% of the population here died from violence and disease," "Today the survivors are people living after a holocaust," "It was a tragedy which went almost unrecorded" "Here in Iquitos, Father Joaquin is trying to set the record straight, to recover the lost history, of A mazonia," "(THEY SPEAK SPANISH)" "In the 16th century these were big towns, large and well-organised communities," "So maybe what you see now is a distant reminder of what 0rellana saw," "(SPEAKS SPANISH)" "(TRANSLAT0R) I had studied the case of 0rellana for a long time and I concluded that 0rellana met a huge diversity of peoples here." "We wondered what happened to all these people." "We reckon there were over six million in the whole of Amazonia." "(MICHAEL) The Spaniards were amazed by the natural produce of the forest and the river, the huge quantities of fish of every, kind, parrots, turtles as large as leather shields," "(SPANISH)" "In his library Father Joaquin has a copy of the original diary," "(SPEAKS SPANISH)" "This is the hand..." "This is the handwriting of Carvajal." "(TRANSLAT0R) "This account was written by Friar Gaspar de Carvajal," ""a friar of the order of Dominicans," ""of the voyage of discovery down the great and famous river."" "The famous great river." "(READS IN SPANISH)" ""And I was an eyewitness to these amazing things, " says Carvajal," ""A man whom God chose to play a part in such a strange" ""and hitherto never experienced voyage of discovery, "" "This is the next stage of our Amazonian journey, the Natalia Carolina." "It says, "Heading for Cubagua today, six o'clock." ""Por mi madre sin falta." "0n my mother without fail."" "Well, it's about half past six." "Well..." "This is Amazon time." "0rellana stayed with the Aparians for two months to build a second, bigger boat, a 30-footer," "A boat strong enough for the sea," "When he left in late April, he still had 2,000 miles of river to go," "(W0MAN SINGS)" "The dream of El Dorado is distant now," "And for me the voyage had begun to gather like static the history, of the intervening 500 years," "The later conquistadors, like the demented Aguirre, the so-called Wrath of God" "The missionaries, the prospectors and the debt raiders, they all came this way," "And the clamour of history, rose like the sound of the forest in the night," "And in the ghostly shapes we passed, it was easy to imagine the Spaniards on their fragile craft," ""What hardships, what suffering and what extraordinary, dangers we passed through, "" "wrote Friar Carvajal, He lost an eye in one attack," ""The people are more hostile now,"" "And as for 0rellana, too kind-hearted a soul by far, some said" "He had learned to read the signs and to negotiate fear," "Most of all, perhaps, in himself" "They now began to see canoes everywhere," "They were approaching even richer lands," "By the middle point of the river, they came past huge settlements, extending for many miles, without any gaps between the clusters of houses." "These were large, well-organised communities, with thousands of people, real high cultures." "They were now inside the territory, of a huge native federation, which stretched for hundreds of miles along the river, the 0magua," "They passed so many towns that they could only remember them by giving jokey tags to people and places," "Main Street, Chinatown, Viciousville and Stupidville," "So 0rellana's diary, offers a new history, for Amazonia, an elaborate series of ancient kingdoms, networks and alliances, which had developed over thousands of years, united by the river itself" "After three days' sailing, we reached the Brazilian frontier," "0rellana had to pass a border here, too - the frontier of the Machiparo state," "He had to fight his way through," "It's so relaxed today I couldn 't find anyone to stamp my passport," "Immigration?" "Immigration?" "(SPEAKS SPANISH)" "Thanks." "Gracias." "But the spectre of Gonzalo Pizarro still haunted 0rellana and his men," "0rellana never forgot the potential cost of crossing Gonzalo Pizarro, a member of the most powerful family in the Americas." "Desertion, after all, was punishable by death." "And their boyhood friendship would count for very little." "So he and his men, all through the journey, covered themselves." "This is the second main document they drew up, formally petitioning 0rellana to be their leader, and every single member of the expedition has signed it, with loud protestations of loyalty to the governor, Gonzalo Pizarro." "But, at this moment, they had no idea whether Pizarro was alive or dead." "Pizarro, though, was a man who could face death without flinching," "The tale of his hellish return has inspired movies, plays and books ever since," ""For suffering, famine and misery " wrote one conquistador," ""this was the worst journey ever in the Indies,"" "Attacked all the way, Pizarro didn 't know where he was or what direction to take to reach Peru, or any place Christians might be," ""We ate all our dogs and horses," he wrote," ""and we got back with only our swords and the rotten rags we stood up in, "" "Plzarro's only thought now was revenge against his boyhood chum, the worst liar that ever there was," "And 0rellana sailed on, as amazing spectacles of nature came one after the other," "In early June, 0rellana arrived at the site of Manaus, where the river stretches to the horizon, as wide as an inland sea," "Manaus was built in the centre of the rainforest," "Founded as a Jesuit mission in the 18th century when the opening up of A mazonia really started" "Where the opera house and the grand mansions now stand, 0rellana saw huge settlements of hative people lining the waterfront," "There are few places where you feel more strongly the all-consuming march of history," "Looking centuries into the future, 0rellana's diary, says this " ""It was our desire that, if possible, the land and its barbaric people" ""should not have negative feelings about our first encounter," ""So that one day the country, might be tamed for pacification" ""and reduced to obedience to our Christian civilisation, "" "The western conception of a city was a new innovation in the Americas which came with the conquest." "They require a new way of life, new laws and customs and institutions to make a new identity, to reshape humanity, if you like." "They also suck in the products of the natural world, of the forest and the river, and consume them." "And in that, cities like this, Manaus, represent a break in that continuum of thousands of years of life here in the Americas." "There may have been five million indigenous people here, when 0rellana came through." "The present population of the natives of Amazonia is 250,000, less than a quarter of this city." "That's the scale of the revolution." "At last, after eight months on the river and against all the odds, in August, 1542, 0rellana reached the mouth of the Amazon," "They had sailed 2,500 miles down the greatest river on earth," "They had seen unknown empires and encountered lost worlds," ""It had been less of a journey," said one of them, "more of a miracle,"" "But even as their makeshift boats carried the 47 survivors to safety in the Caribbean, back in Quito, Gonzalo Pizarro was petitioning the King for revenge," "(SPEAKS SPANISH)" "Pizarro accused 0rellana of treason, a crime punishable by death," ""Captain 0rellana paid no heed to the duty that he owed Your Majesty," ""and to the wellbeing of the army and the whole expedition." ""Instead of bringing us back food, he displayed to us all the greatest cruelty" ""that ever faithless men have shown." ""And he's the worst traitor that ever lived."" "In his defence, 0rellana used the documents that they'd drawn up on the river." ""Pizarro wasn't telling the truth." "What happened was his responsibility." ""The fact was we couldn't get back to him." ""And, in the end, it was God's will that we went on to make such amazing discoveries."" "Pizarro never came home," "He died fighting the Crown for his family's empire in Peru," "His house is still there, the garden where he and Gonzalo crossed toy swords as boys," "He married a wealthy young wife, Anna, but he couldn 't settle back in Spain," "He petitioned the King to send him back to HIS river, with the title of Governor of the Amazon," "But his luck ran out, The expedition was a disaster," "This is how Anna remembered 0rellana's death." ""My husband couldn't find the main channel of the river" ""and, for 11 months, we wandered around like lost people." ""And in that time, we suffered such hardships," ""because of hunger, disease and incessant rainfall." ""We ate all the horses and the dogs" ""and, in the end, almost all the expedition died." ""My husband among them.""