Have you ever made a discovery so big, that could alter the course of the lives of many, yours included, and impact the scientific community, an entire region, and probably the future of generations? I am guessing not, but if you had, could you imagine yourself holding this incredible truth in front of your eyes and being confronted with the moral conundrum of keeping it a secret or revealing it to the world, knowing that things could take a turn out of your control despite your best efforts.
What would you do?
I had these and many other questions traveling the chambers of my mind before talking to Andres Ruzo, a geothermal scientist and accidental Indiana Jones responsible for one of the most amazing re-discoveries of our time. I met Andres at TED conference in Brazil, his sparkly energy, and excited voice when he was talking about his work was infectious, but he did not want to say anything about his upcoming talk. I was sitting third row and I remember feeling like a child at story time, eyes wide, jaw dropped, and fibrillating at every turn that the story took.
“So I grew up between Nicaragua, Peru, and the United States. So I’m culturally confused if you will. As a boy in Lima, my grandfather tells me this amazing story. He told me a bunch of stories, but there was one story that stuck with me and ended up, you know, redefining my life. It’s a story of the Spanish conquest of Peru.
It’s 1532, the Spaniards come, they meet Atahualpa, Emperor of the Inca, who invites them to a peaceful meeting. They stage an elaborate ambush, and it turns into one of the worst massacres in Peruvian history. They capture Atahualpa, hold him hostage, and then this is actually world record-breaking here. The ransom that the Inca paid for Atahualpa, is the single largest ransom for a single individual in all of human history. It’s over two billion dollars in today’s money.
Despite that incredible ransom, the Spaniards again betray him, they kill him, and that starts the next 40 years of fighting between the Inca and the Spanish Empire. When the last emperor is assassinated, the armies are destroyed, the temples are destroyed, the gold has been melted down, and is being shipped back to Spain to be used as money.” Andres said, with the fervent passion of a young boy retelling his grandfather’s favorite story.
I think we have all heard one version or another of this tale of conquest, killing, and venturing into the Amazon, although we may have heard that from less trustworthy sources than a Peruvian grandfather with ancestral roots on the land in question, that’s why I urge you to listen carefully to what is said next…
As the stories of this incredible conquest traveled back home to Spain, more conquistadores felt drawn to Peru in search of more land and civilizations to conquer, and so Andres continues:
“They were hungry for gold, hungry for glory. And this is where our legend really kicks off. These wannabe conquistadores who are after their chance to get rich, and famous go to the now humbled Inca, the now conquered Inca, and ask them, where is another civilization to conquer?
We want more gold. And out of vengeance, says the legend, the Inca tell them: you want more gold? Go to the Amazon. There’s an entire city called Paititi, El Dorado in Spanish, made entirely of gold. The few Spanish who returned from looking for Paititi came back with all these horrible stories. Shamans with powerful spells that drove men mad, warriors with poison arrows that would kill you in a nick. Giant spiders as big as your hand that ate birds, trees so tall they blocked out the sun, and a detail of a river, a big river that boiled. Now I logged this away, over a decade passed, I’m working on my Ph.D., working on Peru’s geothermal energy potential, and understanding green energy for sustainability, and I was helping out the government, the Institute for Geology, Mineralogy, and Mining and Metallurgy of Peru, as far as mapping out geothermal spots in Peru. And I saw that there were spots in the jungle and I thought, oh my gosh, what about the legend? Could there be a boiling river? And they were like, I don’t know, Andres. I don’t think so. And that started a two-year journey to figure out: could this be real? And frankly, after two years, all the experts I spoke to from mining companies, oil and gas companies, government institutions, and academic groups all said no.” Andres said.
Shamans with powerful spells that drove men mad, warriors with poison arrows that would kill you in a nick. Giant spiders as big as your hand that ate birds, trees so tall they blocked out the sun, and a detail of a river, a big river that boiled
Now this is the point in our story where the hero makes the life-altering decision.
Have you ever had an obsession, a hunch, something so strong inside you that was overriding every other rational thought?
An inner truth something you know had to be pursued no matter what? And did you? Because in so many of these conversations, that hunch, that inner intuition, calling, obsession, however you want to name it, seems to be the engine that takes us through a major life-altering moment.
It always comes at a T junction, right for the heart, left for the brain, and how many times have we been talked out of something we knew deep down was worth pursuing?
I never listen to anyone, stubborn as I am, I want all mistakes to carry my name engraved on them, so that I can call my victories too, and I think trusting that instinct it’s like reclaiming the invisible connection to the world around us.
But back to Andres, it is after a conversation with a colleague that things really shift. He asks this guy what he thinks about the possibility of this boiling river existing, and the harsh reply ticks him off just enough to unleash the next round of events.
“So then the last guy that I asked was a very senior geologist from a mining company. And he quite literally said, Andres, your geothermal work is really interesting, but you’re asking stupid questions. You know, stop.
I was at a family dinner, frustrated by the interaction I just had and I was telling this story to my aunt and she’s Brazilian. She’s married to my Peruvian uncle and she tells me, you know, I have been there, I saw the river, I know the Shaman who is guarding it and his wife. And that’s what kicked off the entire journey.”
A casual family dinner, it’s a life-altering moment when discussing your day, you end up discovering that what everyone thinks is a stupid legend from the past, it’s actually as real as it gets. Never underestimate the power of conversation around the dinner table, it seems.
If you have not fallen off the chair by now or left this blog to start searching for information about this river, let me make it easier for you by telling you to first listen to the entire conversation with Andres in the podcast below.
The incredible boiling river journey is equally well narrated in his TED Talk and on the book that came from it and more information is available on his website.
We talked at length about the science, the sacredness of this work, and the impact as well as his future, undoubtedly now merged with the boiling river in a lifelong mission.
But fast forward to today, and Andres is the proud founder of an NGO dedicated to the study and protection of the Boiling River of the Amazon, known as Shanay-Timpishka (meaning boiled with the heat of the sun) by the locals, and all this thanks to his persistence and determination to follow his curiosity and a story from his childhood. As of today, more than 50 scientists have been able to study the river and contribute to advancing knowledge and understanding of this incredible phenomenon.
To listen to the entire story head over to the podcast below.
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