National Geographic: Beyond 2000 - The Explorers (1988) Movie Script
Even as a little kid
I was always curious
you know what was
the next yard like
what was it like
on the next street over
the next neighborhood
the next town
It just snowballs
Ever since I was a kid
I was interested in
animals
I really liked to
get up close
and personal with animals
I was a little boy
who grew up on the shore
lines of San Diego
I wanted to be Captain Nemo
I wanted to command
the Nautilus
Growing up in a small town
in Alabama
I never thought that
I would do this
Just amazing
I think there is
in all human begins
this essence of
exploration
this desire to explore
We all have this hidden
two-year-old in us
that wants to just kind of
reach up
and really feel the world
around us
I really think that there are
too many places to explore
too many things to discover
to sit around
If it is easy
it would have been done
before
I think there are plenty of
places to explore
A lot of those places
are going to be the most
difficult to sustain yourself
There's so much
of the planet
that is unexplored
that I can't imagine we're gonna be
out of work
any time soon
July 16, 1969
Apollo Eleven escapes
the earth's gravity
and sets its course for
the moon
Our urge to explore has
finally outgrown our
small planet
But as the people of
the world look up
the astronauts on board
look back
They marvel at earth
It looks as strange as
the place they're headed
Below them is a planet
still to be explored
The spirit of exploration
is as old as humanity itself
Brave people have always
ventured out into
the darkness
and come back to enlighten us
And in the last century
the pace of accomplishment
has been astonishing
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing
Norgay
first to summit Mount
Everest
Robert Peary and
Matthew Henson
first to the North Pole
Amelia Earhart? first woman
to fly solo across
the Atlantic
That's one small step
for man...
And a thousand years from
now
they will still know
the name Neil Armstrong
But has everything been
discovered?
Is the age of exploration
over?
This is the story of
ten explorers
who believe that the spirit
of exploration still
thrives
It is the story of what
compels them to venture out
time and again
into the unknown
Ian Baker believes that at
the end of the millennium
there are still places on
earth
that have never been named
that have never been
plotted on a map
Somewhere in this vast
Tibetan jungle
he hopes to find a giant
waterfall
He's been searching for
over a decade
Ancient Buddhist prayer
books hold that deep
within a gorge is a cascade
that shrouds
the passageway to paradise
I first heard about it
from a very old lama
who had spent much of
his life
meditating in these
very remote valleys
He had always told me
the greatest of these was
a place called Pemako
in the far southeastern
part of Tibet
Baker made six expeditions
in search of the falls
He has never managed
to reach them
He is not the first to
fail
In 1924, British Botanist
Frank Kingdon-
Ward tried to find
the falls
only to be defeated
by the terrain
Where he failed
Baker hopes to succeed
He knows Kingdon-Ward was
unable to
descend the sheer cliffs
along more than five miles
of the gorge
Could the falls be located
in this unexplored area?
Baker and his expedition
partner
Ken Storm, have won
the trust of local hunters
who will lead them down
paths
that no Westerner has ever
followed
The gorge is a treacherous
place teeming with leeches
stinging nettles and
deadly snakes
Why do people like
Baker risk
so much to explore the
unknown?
I don't feel
that I'm different from
anybody else in the sense
that I think the spirit of
exploration is intrinsic
to human nature
Exploration is really one
of the very
very few things that makes
us human
Once you get a taste of it
you can't go back to
the simple life
I did become tensely
irritated at the endless rain
being soaking wet never
drying out
Leeches all over your legs
and just scratch marks all
over your bodies
and face just because half
the time
you're moving up through
a pathless terrain
But I think anybody
who's given to a life of
exploration
has to feel some sense of
embrace of this kind of
wild existence
where, you know the
comforts
of the civilized world are
suddenly stripped from us
As a young boy, Baker
loved adventure
He yearned to be
the youngest
to reach the top of famous
mountains
And he drew pictures
revealing dreams of
mystical places
places with hidden
waterfalls
My more recent explorations
in the Himalayas
have been in that sense
a continuation
of my earliest childhood
activities
which was really to
explore the forests
and marshes behind the
house
There is still a first out
there for Baker to claim
But reaching the great
falls of the Tsang-po
is an epic journey away
Now that the weather is
clearing a little bit
we're going to try to
make our way down into
this unknown section
And for 75 years
it has been believed to be
an impenetrable wilderness
Ian Baker's expedition to
find the falls has been
slowed...
...to a mile a day
In this terrain
the difference between
life and death
can be a single careless
step
We had on previous
expeditions
seen from a long distance
what appeared to be
a waterfall
But even when we were
a thousand feet
above it a year earlier
we were still not able to
determine whether
in fact, this was the great
falls of the Tsang-po
that Kingdon-Ward had been
looking for
And there was the sense
that
unless you went down to
the falls itself
we would never be able to
answer or resolve that
question
The jungle thickens
The terrain gets
even steeper
Then, finally
in the distance
they hear the river falling
All of the Tsang-po
pouring into the energy
Unbelievable
A century of speculation
is over
They have filled in
one of the last blank
spots on the map
These are, indeed, the
great falls of the Tsang-po
They name it the Hidden
Falls of Dorje Phagmo?
after the region's
most powerful goddess
What this discovery of
the waterfall has done
actually, is to evoke from
people
almost a subconscious
need that
we all have for magical
places in the world
for a sense that there are
still places to be discovered
I don't understand
why people think that
exploration is finished
For me it's really just
started
I think there's plenty of
places to explore
A lot of those places are
gonna be the most
difficult places
to really sustain yourself
within and make
a real contribution
I love this expression:
The last place on earth
And that's what I'm really
trying to bring back
The best explorers
have always brought back to us
with their words
with their pictures
that last place on earth
When the film Congorilla
opened on Broadway in 1932,
audiences flocked to the theater.
Most people had never seen
moving pictures of such exotic animals
You are going to see
and hear the first pictures
in natural sound
ever made in the jungles
of Central Africa
There will be the roar
of the lion
herds of elephants
millions of flamingos
and rivers alive with
the vicious crocodiles
The film was made by Martin
Johnson and his wife, Osa
In 1917, they quit the
Vaudeville Circuit
left their New York home
and began two decades of
exploring and filmmaking
When they began
shooting Congorilla in 1929
wildlife was so plentiful they
needed only to drive into the bush and
turn on their cameras.
The abundance is long gone
To capture what remains, it took
National Geographic photographer
Nick Nichols
weeks of brutal trekking
through the jungles of Central Africa
I have no interest in
wildlife photography for
the sake of it
It's just not justifiable
in this time when
we've got so many habitats
and creatures that are
endangered
In our case,
we're going out in
an unexplored part
of the African forest
We really know
what's out there
but we want to come back
and show everybody and say
"Let's save it."
The job that I do is
considered
one of the most romantic
jobs on earth
Everybody wants to do it
But nobody sees it for
what it really is
being hot, insects
diseases
People see the glamour of
the finished product
or the glamour of the travel
and they want to do it
But they don't really want
to do it
Why do explorers subject
themselves to such hardship?
You've got to have something
that drives you
because you are getting
into the suffering
the hardships, being away
from home
So if you don't feel like
you've got a mission
I don't think you can put
those feet
in front of you when
the going gets tough
There's difficult cultures
difficult political
situations
difficult physical
circumstances
and no guarantee of
anything except that
there's gonna be
an endless number of hurdles
that you're gonna have to
pass over
to pull something out
and make it meaningful
And that is enough to
really deter any
but the most hardened
explorer
There's fleas that burrow
into your feet and lay eggs
You gotta deal with those
You may get 100 a night
that you gotta deal with
There's other animals that
go into your privates and
burrow away
Shuffling in the mud,
looking for animals
There was heat and there
is piranhas
and there is caimans and
there is crocodiles
and killer bees
Then there is the mosquitoes
that bite you
and cause all the different
kinds of malaria
Then there is flies biting
that cause blindness and
elephantitis
It's just endless
It's five a.m.
and I'm going out to
photograph in the fig tree
that [Neil] just rigged
a tree platform in
I'm trying to get pictures
of monkeys and birds
which are real elusive
I have no assurance that
they'll be there
I just hope so
I studied art as a young man
I was a painter and
I wasn't very good at it
As soon as I picked up
a camera
and took
my first photographs
when I was 18 in college
I decided at that moment
that's what I was gonna do
There's something in nature
that is out of our realm
of control
I'm not sure what it is
It's an essence
That's what I have been
looking for all my life
Who knows how to get
a frog to stand up?
It is this word "wild"
which means not controlled
What's behind that is
trying to
find an essence that
I can't define
but we all know what it is
We all know that there's
something edgy out there
that keeps us whole
because we come from
wildness, too
In 1997, when Nichols was
photographing tigers in India
his journey embodied
the new creed of exploration
Unlike earlier explorers
he is not driven by a desire
to return with animals
in cages or trophy heads...
but with pictures?
pictures he hopes will save
these animals from
extinction
When I see an elephant in
a zoo or a tiger in a zoo
I'm looking at a specimen
If we had five gazillion
tigers in zoos
we have no tigers
If they're not out walking
around in the forest
that forest is
not even whole
Tigers are part
of the package, the chain
A tiger won't pose while
Nick snaps its portrait
So his crew rigs intricate
camera traps
to capture a tiger's image
They hope one of
the big cats
will trigger the
motion-sensors on the cameras
We're trying to find a way
to take pictures of tigers
on their terms.
Actually, the tigers are
taking their own pictures
That's what it gets down to
There's no humans here
they come along
whenever they want to
We really wanted just to
find a way
to get into their world
it's such a secret world
Weeks pass? No tigers.
Go in!
Oh, my God, yes!
Yes!
C'mon!
Go in!
My mission is definitely
to look at the earth
as a finite thing and say
let's celebrate this thing
Let's find a way to realize
that it's so precious and
so fragile
The new edge to exploration
is that
we must know how
the planet works
Like Nichols,
Sylvia Earle is driven
by the desire to preserve
what she finds
What drives me to explore?
It's the need to understand
what we're doing
so that we perhaps might
be able to do better
in the future
Earle is the Chuck Yeager
of oceanography
a pioneer of undersea
exploration
Five species of marine life have been
named after her
Earle was raised on a farm in New Jersey
in a time when girls weren't expected go
grow up and have professions, let alone
become explorers.
For me, my playground was
the sea
I knew from the moment
I first saw a horseshoe crab
sort of crawling up
a beach
in New Jersey that I had
to know more
about where it came from
and how it lived
and how it spent its
days and nights
And I've been intrigued
with that ever since
Seventy percent of the
earth's surface is water
but most of it remains
as unexplored as
the New World
was to Columbus
No place on the planet is more difficult
to explore than the deep
There's nothing more
frustrating for a biologist
a scientist such as I
than to go down to 150 feet
or even push the limits
and go over to the edge
of a drop-off
into the sea and know that
you just have to stop
People have always dreamed
of exploring the ocean
But for centuries anything
below a few hundred feet
was impossible to reach...
...until William Beebe and
Otis Barton invented
the bathysphere
a steel ball they hoped
would take them a half-mile
below the surface
It took four years
of testing
before the bathysphere
was ready
Finally in 1934,
Beebe and Barton
jammed themselves in
not knowing if it would be
submarine or a coffin
As they were slowly lowered
into the depths
the pressure built up
to more than 1,300 pounds
per square inch
It was so cold,
Beebe recalled
it was like sitting on
a cake of ice
But they did it
The bathysphere went a
half-mile below the surface
The record stood for
Building on the accomplishments
of Beebe and Barton
Earle has pushed the limits
of underwater exploration
In 1979, untethered and
alone
she dove to over 1,200 feet
It was as daring a feat
as the early space walks
Back in 1970,
it was uncommon for women
to do some of the sorts
of things
that I found myself
hankering to do
There were no women
astronauts going to the moon
In fact, there were no women
astronauts at all
at that point in time
And aquanauts were also
an iffy sort of enterprise
Earle was one of five women
selected to join a team
of aquanauts
who lived and studied in
an underwater laboratory
anchored in the Caribbean
They called us aquabelles,
they called us aquababes
They had a hard time
calling us aquanauts
I didn't care what they
called us
as long as they let us go,
and they did
Earle has never let
anything stop her
Her passion for the ocean
is too strong
For me the lure of the deep
is the lure of the unknown
It's that curiosity that
all children have
but scientists never
lose
you just have to know
what is going on
In order to satisfy that
curiosity
Earle, like so many
explorers
is at the mercy of
technology
For years, she has teamed up with
engineer Graham Hawkes. Together,
they have helped revolutionize
underwater exploration
You know, it's said that
there're more footprints
on the moon than
in the deep ocean
That's kind of literally
true
Once you step foot
in the oceans
you are just back where
early man was
you're back looking at
a piece of the planet no
one's seen before
When Earle and Hawkes
conceived of deep flight
a new fast-moving submarine
they had to build it
themselves
There is no NASA of the
deep seas
You know, I was born to be
an engineer looking back
I grew up with
the nickname professor
I apparently was always
taking things apart
Numerous rockets,
numerous experiments,
numerous little explosions
My parents were both
from London
My father was postman
And the small part of
London Tootting
the wrong side of the
railway tracks
went to the wrong schools
Hawkes was the first in
his family to go to college
Over the past 20 years
he has become
one of the leading
inventors of submersibles
Hawkes's and Earle's dream
is to literally swim with
the fish
It's the counterpart
of flying
you fly into that other
atmosphere
There's this moment of discovery
that this is not
just water
this is water filled
with life
There are jellies,
there are fish,
there are eyes all around
There you go as an explorer
not alone for a moment...
not even for an instant
are you alone
Oh, my God, it's coming
right at me
Oh, my gosh
Oh!? Just so close.
He was just beautiful
Funded in part by the
National Geographic Society
Earle is now diving in
a remarkable new machine
It is the tool
for the next generation of
deep sea exploration
In July of 1969,
four simple words
expand forever the limits
of human potential
The eagle has landed
The calmness of the voice
masks the terror of
the moment
Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin
have only seconds of fuel
left
when they land on the moon
Armstrong's pulse races
at 156 beats per minute
That's one small step
for man,
one giant leap for mankind
The triumph seemed complete
but landing was
the easier part
NASA couldn't guarantee
the safe return
of the astronauts
President Richard Nixon
had prepared a eulogy
in case the men were
stranded on the moon's
surface
It read, in part:
"These brave men know that
there is no hope for their
recovery
But they also know that
there is hope for mankind
in their sacrifice."
Our greatest achievements
are often balanced on
the edge of catastrophe
For 20 years, Robert Peary
and his expedition partner
Matthew Henson,
had been risking their lives
to walk to the North Pole
On the fourth expedition
temperatures dropped to
minus 63 degrees
They were forced to eat
their dogs for food
But the men relentlessly
advanced and
on April 6, 1909,
they became the first to
stand at the top of the world
"The Pole at last,
Peary wrote in his journal
"The prize of three centuries
Mine at last."
As much as Peary and Henson
dreamed of the North Pole
and Armstrong the moon
explorers have dreamed of
climbing the world's
highest mountain
For decades, the slopes of
Everest had claimed
the life of one climber
after another
Then, in 1953...
Mount Everest has been
conquered by members
of the British expedition
...Tenzing Norgay and
Edmund Hillary
overcame the cold and
the thin air to stand on
the summit of Everest
No one else will ever
be able to claim the title:
"First to the roof of
the world."
The drive to explore
endures
But have today's explorers
been born too late?
I'd love to have been an
explorer in an earlier era
where I could have been
the first man to cross
the Congo
or the first man
to penetrate
the heart of Australia
or climb Everest
It would have been
wonderful
Exploration a century ago
was about assigning names
to places
and I think it's become
more about assigning meaning
You really have to push
yourself to the edge
That's why it hasn't been
done before
I mean, if it was easy,
it would have been done
before
An explorer is someone
who pursues the epic journey
a person who has a dream
who prepares to fulfill
that dream
assembles a team, goes out
into the ocean
overcomes the tests of
the mind and the heart
attains the truth and
returns to society to
share the truth
That's the epic journey
and that's what
the explorer does
Deep sea explorer,
Bob Ballard
has spent a career in search
of tragedy and disaster
For years, he longed to
find the Titanic
It was the most elegant
luxury liner of its time
Titanic was built to last
forever
On April 10, 1912, she set sail on
her maiden voyage
Five days later
she disappeared into
the cold waters
of the North Atlantic
More than 1,500 perished
People believed the ship
was gone forever
and that Ballard's quest
to find her was futile
But he proved them wrong
In 13,000 feet of water,
Ballard found the Titanic
He made history come to life
People could see the past
floating before them
a romantic era stolen away
by an iceberg and now
returned
I don't go to sea
unless I am really
convinced I can succeed
I have decided not to do
a lot of expeditions
People say,
"Why don't you find Amelia
Earhart's airplane?"
Fat chance.
I won't take on a job unless
I have a good shot at it
Ballard did not stop with
the Titanic
He found the Nazi battleship Bismarck...
...explored the torpedoed
luxury liner Lusitania...
Contact. That's a ship
It's definitely you
My only love
...and located
the aircraft carrier Yorktown
sunk in the World
War II battle of Midway
I have little boys come up
to me
and say they wish I would
stop exploring
because there isn't going
to be anything left for them
And I try to remind them
that I've only seen
one-tenth
of one percent of
the deep ocean
so there's plenty there
This time, Ballard is
exploring further back
in time than he has ever
gone before...
two thousand years ago
when Roman ships criss-crossed
the Mediterranean
They were small vessels
at the mercy of the sea
Many of them never made it
home
To help him find
the sunken ships
Ballard has enlisted
the help of a Navy submarine
The NR-1 was used during
the Cold War
for missions so secret
the Navy still won't talk
about them
Now the sub is hunting for
a Roman galley
that sank to the ocean floor
Captain, ship's fit
for dive
You have permission
to submerge ship
Dive! Dive!
For hundreds of years
scientists have looked in
the ocean for our history
And for most of that time
they've only been able to
look a very short distance
And what we're trying to
accomplish is something
that has never been done
before
and that is to try and
excavate a ship of antiquity
that is thousands of feet
beneath the sea
The NR-1 hits thick mud
The sub's arm is unable to
dig below the surface
Do the wooden hulls
of Roman vessels
still exist just beyond reach
or has time stolen them away?
Will this be Ballard's first failure?
You can be lucky,
but you work for it
You know, you cannot
just go
and dig and discover
something
No! You have to stay day
and night and work very hard
And luck will come to you
And that's why luck cannot
come to a lazy explorer
Like Robert Ballard,
Egyptologist Zahi Hawass
is an explorer of deep time
He has spent a career
searching the sands
of the Giza Plateau
One of his most remarkable
finds began with an accident
when a horse, galloping
past his excavation site
plunged its hoof through
the sand
Below lay a vaulted tomb,
sealed in the time of
the pharaohs
Inside, Hawass glimpsed
eternity
Because of the size
of the tomb
because of the unique shape
of the vaulted ceiling
and also because it was
cased inside with plaster
then I believe this is
the man
who was in charge of
the whole administration
of the workmen
This is the man who wanted
to be sure that
all these people live in
a good living
and they go early in
the morning to work
and they come by the sunset
and they live in
the village,
and at the same time
when they die, there is
a tomb for everyone
Besides the foreman's tomb
Hawass and his crews
unearthed more than
an entire cemetery
of workers
For centuries,
the pyramid builders were
thought to be slaves
a captive labor force
cringing under the whip
This discovery shattered
that myth
For explorers like Hawass
the possibilities of
discovery seem limitless
The sands of the desert
are constantly shifting
Artifacts, hidden from one
generation of archeologists
can suddenly be revealed
to the next
In 1998, a team under
Hawass's supervision
made a startling find: A tomb, unseen
untouched for thousands of years
It is beautiful,
the painting is so beautiful
It is very rare
We discover a lot of things
every day, everywhere
in Egypt
But everything,
almost 99 percent of what
we discover, is robbed
This is unique,
and this is rare,
because of one thing:
This is intact
Beneath a limestone lid,
they discover a sarcophagus
This is wonderful
The symbol of resurrection
Under the glare of
television lights
they struggle to remove
the heavy lid
Have the contents inside
decayed and rotted?
They crane forward, peer inside and a gift
from the first
millennium B.C.: a mummy dressed
in a shroud of bead work
portraying the gods of the afterlife
Hieroglyphs around the coffin tell a
story from the final glory days of
ancient Egypt.
Buried here is a
nobleman, a member
of the pharaoh's court
His name was Lufaa
He is the director
of the palace
He was near to the king
The king lives in
the palace
This is the man that is
used everyday
to know the throne is fine
your majesty
The ladies, or the wife,
your main wife
she's not coming today
to see you
You can meet this official
today
the dining room is set,
wine is there
we will make the party
tonight
That is the man that does
all the arrangements
at the palace
He makes the palace life
Hawass's explorations have
given us
a more detailed picture
of the past
of who we are and where we
come from
An explorer is someone's
who trying to find answers
to basic truths
I think all of us want to
know those answers
Certainly, we want to know
who we are and
where we came from and
where we're going
And I think most people
think about those questions
but very few of them spend
a career
trying to find answers to
those things
For weeks,
Robert Ballard has been
searching for history
in the depths of
the Mediterranean
He has not been able to
find the Roman ships
he believes sank in
these waters
He cannot afford to fail
A single expedition can
cost millions of dollars
Hold shipwreck
Holy mackerel
At last...
Look at that!
...3,000 feet beneath
the waves...
fragile amphora...
jugs that held wine
dried fish and olive oil
Instead of finding the
amphora sort of randomly
scattered throughout
this area
they are, in fact,
concentrated in
very narrow lines
one amphora after another,
hundreds of them
As Ballard and the captain
of the NR-1 plot the find
the final tragic moments for
the Roman ship are revealed
It must have been caught
in a fierce storm
They began to off-load
their cargo
as fast as they could
throwing the amphoras off
one side of the ship and
off of the other
This is probably the width
of the ship
the separation between
these two rows
Two miles of amphoras were
being thrown over the side
until finally the ship
went under and ultimately
sank here
Ballard deploys a scavenger
sub named Jason
to bring the 2,000-year-old
artifacts to the surface
Robert Ballard has proven
that we can dive into
the deepest oceans
and resurrect the sunken
stories of the past
The key is that
you plug away
you slug away,
you slug away
and then there's
this moment of discovery
And it's so exhilarating
It's just
the greatest natural
high known to a human race
And once you've
experienced that
you want to experience it
again
There is so much of the
planet that's unexplored
that I can't imagine
we're going to be out
of work anytime soon
Exploration really has that
element of discovering
something new
You make it a discipline
to observe
to document, to record
what you see
The old style of explorer
it was about conquering
something
about, you know,
putting your flag on it
about getting control,
to be the master of
I think the real difference
between adventure and
exploration
is that exploration is
adventure with a purpose
Michael Davie is just
starting to explore our world
In 1997, at the age of 22
he trekked from Cape Town,
South Africa,
to Cairo Egypt
a 5,000-mile journey that
took him seven months
Davie uses a video camera
to explore more than
geography
he explores culture
and people
His journey epitomizes the
explorer within us all
Do you think life here
in Botswana is difficult?
Yes
Why?
There are no jobs
But your future, does your
future look good?
Yes, I think so
Peter Pan was my hero,
you know
I wanted to live
a Peter Pan existence
I wanted to fly away to
Never-Never Land
and run wild with
the Lost Boys
You know,
I think it's every kid's
dream to get out there
and bash his way through
the jungle
and have wild adventures
and extreme encounters
and get himself into as
much trouble as possible
And now I get paid to
do that
which is the greatest
privilege of my life
Man, this place is just
amazing, just amazing
An explorer is somebody
who has to look deeper into
things than things were
looked into before
It's about going into
territory
which geographically
has been explored before
but emotionally perhaps
has not
Mozambique at last
I just hope I don't step
on any land mines
Red danger sign
Danger! Mines!
What kind of damage could
a mine like this do?
Take off a lower leg or
take off a limb
It's primarily a weapon
that's designed to maim
rather than kill, although
there's every chance
in the world
that it would kill a small
child or an elderly person
One of the most inspiring
people
I've ever met in my life
was a five-year-old girl
named Isabel
She was a land mine victim
living in Mozambique
And I think I forgot that I
had the camera in my hand
and suddenly I was looking
at a five-year-old girl
fighting to learn
to walk again
That was an incredibly
potent and
emotional moment for me
and I don't think it's one
that I will ever forget
When I turned 21,
my parents and I were on
a camping trip
and we were sitting around
the campfire
And we decided to count
the number of times
we'd moved in my 21 years
And we had moved home
And at that point I
realized that
although I wanted to become
an explorer of some kind
I had already spent
my entire life doing that
Danger certainly adds
an element of spice
to what I do and
I love that
I love the sense that
there's something at stake
Today is a hell of a lot
tougher than
yesterday was and it's
been quite scary, actually
We've been surrounded by
a forest fire
I need the adrenaline,
yeah, I mean
otherwise I'd still be
at law school studying
contracts
Hello
What's the problem?
I don't have to quote
this camera
I know my rights
I think the first time
I got into real trouble
I wasn't enjoying it all
I was absolutely terrified
But once I saw myself get
through that situation
I think that's probably
when the addiction
kicked in
Okay, well you don't have
to hassle me all the time
I know I'm foolish and I
know I'm reckless sometimes
But, you know
there is a certain amount of
appeal in riding that edge
You can't really understand
life or
appreciate it or
understand it or
the scope of it until
you've flirted with death
a little but
understood the other side
Exploration is often
a solitary venture
a journey to understand
yourself
and your place
in the world
Heidi Howkins craves
dangerous places
For her, risking death on
a thin cornice of snow
is how she explores life
Who could have guessed that
this little girl would
grow up
to be a high altitude
mountaineer?
There was one influence
in her life
that might have given you
a clue? her father
She describes him as
an eccentric fitness fanatic
He passed along his passion
for ultra-long distance
races
But Howkins quickly
got bored
She wanted something more
For me, those are just
physical challenges
They're not mental
challenges
Yes, sure, you get to
the point where
to continue running
after 24 hours
you've got to have
some kind of mental urge
But it's, there's no danger
There's no risks,
there's no fears
But risk and fear are at
the core of mountaineering
While an earlier generation
of climbers
would have been satisfied
with conquering one
world-class peak in a year
Howkins hopes to conquer
two: Everest and K2
without the aid of
supplemental oxygen
It really doesn't matter
that I'm female when
I'm up there
What matters is that
I'm a good climber
And that's a great feeling
That's something that
definitely gives me a charge
It'd be nice to share that
with other women
It's just that there aren't
that many of us
My legs are saying,
"No more up!"
Howkins knows all too well
that once she sets foot on
a mountain
she puts her life in peril
While climbing Kanchenjunga
in 1997
she was struck by a massive
avalanche
Although buried
in deep snow
she found the strength to
claw her way to the surface
In 1998, her expedition was
hit by another avalanche
The slabs of snow missed
her
but she was helpless as
members of her team were
swept away
Two were killed
Despite the danger
Howkins returns year after
year to these mountains
You have to confront your
own mortality
like that every day on
an expedition
if not every hour,
or every minute
It becomes something
that you know sort
of like your fingers
and your toes
You're certain that
it's there
and you're fully aware
of it
You're catapulted into
a totally different realm
when you're facing that
fear
that terror, that mystery,
the unknown
Why do climbers like Howkins
scour the earth
for extreme vertical places?
Why do they eagerly seek
out life on the edge?
Why do I do this if it's
so cold and
so uncomfortable and scary?
Because I don't want life
to be easy
You know, I find greater
meaning in my life
when I go out and struggle
to get something I want
On Baffin Island, 300 miles
north of the Arctic Circle
there is a wall of granite
more than twice
as high as the Empire State
building
It's not the world's highest,
it's hardly even famous
But no one has climbed it
For four world class
climbers
that's an irresistible
challenge
I think, to me personally
true adventure requires
an uncertain outcome
It's gotta have this big
question mark hanging over it
It's probably the hardest
piece of big wall
climbing that I've done
Maybe that's what
it's all about
pushing yourself so far
out there
that you can't really
turn around
You have to keep going
Basically, a trip like
this is a journey
It's a journey of exploration
into a beautiful wilderness
like Baffin Island
I don't have a death wish,
I have a life wish
And these trips bring you
closer to life
than anything I can imagine
Howkins's journey is becoming
increasingly difficult
She is approaching
the death zone
Above 26,000 feet
the air is so thin
that the brain is deprived
of oxygen
It becomes hard to think
straight
Every fiber in your body
is telling you to stop
to sit down, to die,
essentially
You've moved beyond your
survival instinct
There has to be something
beyond reason
that's pushing you
to continue moving
especially to continue
climbing up
Howkins isn't the first
woman
to try climbing both Everest
and K2 in a single year
In 1995,
Alison Hargreaves had
successfully climbed Everest
and had reached the summit
of K2
But on her descent
she was caught in a storm
and died on the mountain
Howkins herself is
in trouble
Illness and weather stop
her ascent
I can't describe how I
really feel right now
without using four-letter
words
I mean, I'm like,
I've got a fever
I'm sitting at 21,000 feet
I slept for about one hour
last night
and the other 11 hours
I hacked up all kinds of
lung gunk
I've got bronchitis or
something
She is forced to admit
defeat
give up the summit,
and descend
To deny that the summit
is important
isn't what I'm trying to do
It's just that it's not as
important as the way
in which I climb
The journey that happens
on the way
to the summit is more
important
It sounds clich,
but it's true
It's not whether you
reach the summit, it's how
It's not what you do
it's how you do it
that matters
The best explorers are
always imagining
the next journey,
the next goal
But what are the personal
costs of such relentless?
I'm on the road a lot
It's very difficult
to develop roots
to put out roots in
any one community
because I'm not here for
enough of the year
to really get to know people
I regret that I didn't
have more time
with my children
when they were young
because I chose to go out
on expedition
The negative side is
obviously being away from home
I love my family
And I love land
I think the most important
thing
I've learned about
exploring the ocean
is how much I love land
You know, I have absolutely
no regrets about it
Whatever one might
conventionally see
as a sacrifice is not
a sacrifice
and that it really entails
not seeking out security
above all else
I think my biggest
sacrifices are the fact
that I'm going to die
real young
because I've just been
worn out
from these tropical
diseases
That's my biggest
sacrifice
The Llanos,
wild heart of Venezuela
For the early explorers
who dared enter this
untamed place
no creature loomed larger
than South America's giant
serpent...
Look out, Jimmy!
Hold the head, hold it!
Explorers spun tales of
intent on human flesh
Jim is black in the face,
almost done for
Exploration now is very
different than it used to be
Early explorers would go
and conquering things
conquering people,
many times even destroying
the things that they were
exploring
Exploration now has a much
more respectful meaning
and taste to it
A barefoot explorer,
Jesus Rivas is hunting
the anaconda
not for sport,
but to understand this
mysterious beast
Rivas explores a dangerous
landscape
for the anaconda rules this
swamp with lethal efficiency
It's meal of choice is
the capybara
a giant rodent that can
weigh in at over 140 pounds
The snake kills with power,
not poison
It wraps its coils so
tightly around the capybara
that the animal cannot
breathe
so tightly that its blood
can no longer circulate
It will take the snake six
hours to ingest this meal
The anaconda is strong
enough to overwhelm and
kill a person
Rivas, however, is obsessed
with getting
as close as he can to these
creatures
There's no telling how many
hours of fruitless sun
I got on my head
and after six, eight hours
looking for a snake
in the swamp and nothing
happens
But if you're stubborn
enough and if you go for
it and you try and try
and eventually you
accomplish it
The time comes when you
step on something
and your foot bounces back
and there's this big animal
underneath you
Hurry, hurry
Are you losing your grip?
In a second, I will
Oh, it's a big mama
Come here and get
a better grip
It is a wonderful animal
It is an animal that,
if anything
has to inspire admiration
and awe more than
any other thing
Godzilla!? We are having
a ball, aren't we?
Rivas and his wife,
biologist Rene Owens
have captured and studied
more than 800 snakes
Their exploration
funded in part by the
National Geographic Society
is a first
People ask me why it has
not been studied before
And the reason is that
I don't think anybody
thought it was possible
You can't find them, they
are too hard to get around
we can't subdue them
they are a very hard
animal to study
and that is why they
haven't been studied
Wait, wait, wait here
To crack the code of
this strange beast
Rivas searches
for breeding balls
massive coils of mating
snakes
He plants radio transmitters
to track potential mothers
Ever since I was a kid,
I always loved the wild
I had this urge of going
out into the wild
into the forest,
into the sea, into the ocean
into whatever was
a good natural habitat
Oh, you want to kiss me,
don't you?
I'm not your lover
My mother, when I was a kid,
called, had this word
for me
It was "pata caliente"
which means hot feet
because she couldn't stop
me from going out
and looking for
interesting things to do
Okay, I'm gonna pull
the whole thing
to see what's going on
Rivas and Owens have struck
anaconda gold
a breeding ball
This is their Everest,
their North Pole
To reproduce, as many as
a dozen male anacondas
will wrap themselves
around a single female
Rivas and Owens have
just begun to
unravel the secrets of this
communal mating ritual
The first time I laid hands
on an anaconda
it was a large female next
to a bridge
it was a massive animal
When I put my hands around
it and couldn't grip it
my fingers could feel
just pure muscle
It was unbelievable
It was the thing that really
hooked me about the animal
Nice female
It's beautiful
Look at those colors
Out there, somewhere
in the swamp
Rivas believes there are
giant anacondas
beasts of monstrous
proportions
He dreams of discovering
such a serpent one day
I've thought a lot about
what to do
if I found this animal
that is too big for me
to catch
but is too big for me to
let it go
I don't know what I'll do
It will be some tough fight
I don't know
who's gonna win
They're all my family
Rivas is following
in the footsteps
of a noble tradition of
naturalist as explorer...
...people like
Charles Darwin
who set sail to
the Galapagos Islands
and saw birds in a
whole new way
He returned to England
with the theory of
evolution...
...or Jane Goodall
who lived for decades in
the African wilderness
and with a patient gaze
explored the world
and the mind of
the chimpanzee
She has revolutionized our
understanding of animals
She witnessed chimps doing
things
no one had seen before
like making tools
Her explorations have
shown us
how closely connected
we are to the natural world
Since Goodall began her
studies 40 years ago
the world's population
has nearly doubled
Blink and wild habitat
vanishes
Explorers, like
herpetologist Brady Barr
must act as emergency room
surgeons
and move quickly to
save endangered species
I would give anything to
go back in time
and see what the planet
was like
when it was more in balance
before there were so
many humans on the planet
Something's wrong with
the Everglades
It's an ecosystem in peril
It's dying
And the alligator is
a crucial component
in that ecosystem
In the Everglades,
the 'gators breed less
frequently
their growth is stunted
To find out why
he's exploring the belly
of the beast, literally
You have to know
what's important in
the alligator's diet
before you can get a handle
on the bigger picture
you know,
what's really happening with
these alligators out here
To investigate their
culinary habits
Brady must first find
and catch one of these swamp
dwellers; no easy task
Scary situations are just
part of the job
just the nature of
the situation
and what I do and
where I go
If you're gonna work
on something
that can eat you or bite
you and kill you
I mean that's just
there's no way to get away
from the danger
It's just a part of
the business
Right there!
Okay, try to keep
the light right on it
I'm gonna try to move up
to it
Oh yeah, I got him,
I got him
See that?
Okay, now are you ready
to give it a try?
Now, when I tell you to move
move fast
Okay! It's always a little
nerve-racking
to tape the jaws up
This alligator's not
that big
I've always been fascinated
with alligators
even as a small child
But I grew up in the
cornfields of southern Indiana
There weren't many
alligators there
I went to graduate school
in south Florida
where there were a lot of
alligators
And I saw these large
carnivores
living in close contact
with humans
His explorations are
proving that
this close contact is toxic
for the alligator
Alligators in the Everglades
grow very, very slowly
A seven-foot animal 100
miles north of here
on Lake Okeechobee might
be eight years old
A seven-foot alligator
here in the Everglades
this alligator? might be
Maybe it's mercury
poisoning
maybe it's quality of
the diet
That's what we're looking
into
Maybe it's pollution
Changes in hydrology have
changed
what the alligator is
eating
It's a complicated picture
and, you know
hopefully we'll shed
a little light on it
with this stomach content
data
We're going to put
this garden hose into
the mouth of the alligator
down into the stomach
fill it with water and
then May Lynn's going to
give it
the Heimlich maneuver just
like a choking person
Hit it hard.
Everything you got
I'm gonna pull the hose
this time
One, two, three, go!
I didn't feel anything
come out
Look at this
There's a seven-foot
alligator
and here's the contents
of its stomach
One snail with the tissue
still attached
And here is two, three
remains of four snails
Before we started this
research
people said, "Oh, alligators
eat birds and fish and
you know, pull down deer."
We're finding they eat a
lot of snakes and
believe it or not,
they also eat snails
That's how these alligators
are making a living
out here in the Everglades
It's a tough place to live
If I was an alligator
I wouldn't want to live in
the Everglades
Paul Sereno is famous
one of the most famous bone
hunters in the world
Just 41 years old
he's already made more
significant discoveries
than most paleontologists
make in a lifetime
Time and again
Sereno has headed out into
the unknown
and come back with
the bones of dinosaurs
that no one has seen before
For Sereno, 1,000 years
is a blip in time
His finds allow us
to imagine history on
a geological scale
history that is more than
How many chances
do you have to make a mark
in the world
to change the way we look
at a continent
the way the world was
With one expedition
we really have the chance
And the only way that
we can do that is
really, by performing beyond
what we think we can do
This time Sereno is
on an expedition deep into
the Sahara
It's a harsh landscape
Sand storms, relentless
heat and gun-toting bandits
will make the next four
months a brutal experience
Paleontology often finds
the most remote places
because they are places
that are raw earth
places difficult to live in
places often unexplored
And the more unexplored
the better
the better chance you have
of finding something
that nobody's ever seen
before
Just getting to
the fossil beds
is a grueling cross-country
road trip
The journey is not
just arduous
it's potentially lethal
A civil war in this area
ended recently
Travelers were killed on
this road the week before
I have told you that
we might require an armed
guard before we left
I didn't know the details
of it
I didn't know what happened
last week
That was in the future then
We have items that people
want
items that they have
killed people for
It's a personal risk
going out there
There's no question
about it
If something happens
or if people feel that
whatever their obligations are
whatever their personal
feelings are
that they've reached that
point and want to go back
I don't blame anybody for
that circumstance
I will help you leave, you
know, in a timely fashion
It's the classic explorer's
dilemma:
How much are you willing to
risk to achieve your goal?
Are you willing to risk
your life?
Although the team will
need armed guards
no one abandons
the expedition
no one wants to pass up
the chance of making
a major find
After five days and 14 flat
tires
they finally reach their
destination
Okay, show me the money
Where're the bones?
Although the world Sereno
explores vanished millions
of years ago
it still lives in
his imagination
You've got to look at
something
that doesn't look like a
lake and imagine back to
what it was like as a lake
What this little fragment
here is telling you is that
there were fish there
There were trees
This was an area
where there was a chance
that your prize possession
a dinosaur or a crocodile or
whatever you're looking for
could have gotten buried
there
I think I inspire in part
by example in the field
I wouldn't ask anybody
to do anything
that I wouldn't be doing
myself
I can take the heat
so I'll work right through
the middle of the day
at 120 degrees out
on the site
the bone actually reaching
really, really hot
I really find that exploring
back in time is
one of the most fulfilling
things
because it forces you to
imagine
And at first, imagination
sounds unscientific
After all, we're observers
of hard evidence
But, in fact, imagination
is what
I think is the essence
of science
Dig by dig, explorers like
Sereno have transformed
pure imagination into
scientific fact
The team has been working
in heat often over
And beneath tons of
rock... a revelation.
We have a couple of
skeletons mixed at this site
That's a conclusion we've
drawn after a lot of work
What we discovered
when we first started
peeling back the mound here
is the hip region
and back bone of a very
large sauropod
Here's the vertebrae here
Sereno thinks the animals
were the victims of
a huge flood
The surging water piled
their multi-ton bodies
in a stack
and the river sediment
buried their bones
Although the sauropods are
a significant find,
Sereno is not satisfied
He sets out deeper into
the desert
in search of more bones
Go this way?
Okay, go this way.
As hard-working and
focused as he is now
it wasn't always the case
As a child, he broke school
windows with rocks
and even tried to derail
trains
The one thing that kept
him on track was bones
He's been fascinated with
them since childhood
At the new site,
the team can't contain
their excitement
There are bones everywhere
We've got an aranosaurus
We got therasaur
You've got a sauropod,
and a therapod
Five minutes
They can leave their pick
axes in the truck
Fossils are scattered around
on the surface of the desert
No one has been here
to scavenge the bones
Wow! Look at those ribs!
Beautiful!
Bone by bone
they uncover a predator
some kind of high-spined
dinosaur with a toothy jaw
Yeah, this is a piece of
aranosaurus
And then Sereno and
his team
make another stunning
discovery
Wow, this is great, Dave
That's a big ass claw!
It's a foot-long thumb claw
just laying there
on the surface
Anybody would have stopped
to pick it up
but no one was there
That's a particularly
exciting moment
sort of a chilling feeling
that reveals that there
are many
many places on the surface
of the earth
that have not been
investigated
And it's just the beginning
Bones of the animal
have been preserved
in the sand and rock
Sereno thinks
they have discovered
a new species of spinosaur
Not until they haul over
four tons of bones
back to the lab will they
know for sure
The expedition is over
but the journey of discovery
has just begun
Over the next year
in this basement laboratory
at the University
of Chicago
Sereno's team will
painstakingly reconstruct
the animal
I had a vision of something
I would like, I think
to see this animal down
low up front
as if it were almost fishing
with its hand
you know, with the claws
ready to grab something
It's just like you say,
to some extent
interacting with something
it's looking, it's ready
to go after something
We are literally
resurrecting a world
that once existed
When we set foot in Africa,
in the desert
there wasn't one skeleton
or skull that was known
well enough to reconstruct
from the whole Cretaceous
period
That's the last half of
dinosaur evolution
We now can stand among six
or seven of our recreations
Wow! That is really big
For the first time
in 100 million years
the spinosaur stands
It gives the public a sense
of a lost world
a time without humans,
something that's foreign,
strange...
a time when there were
animals that weren't like us
where we didn't influence
and control the world like
we do today
That's critical, I think
for understanding and also
preserving our future
The beast is 11 feet tall
And from the tip of its tail
to its fang-filled snout
it measures more than
I think there is a point
in an expedition when you
feel like
"We've done it!"
Unconsciously,
you realize there's
tension that's gone
a tension that drove you
to spend months organizing
and energizing a team to be
able to accomplish that
But there is a thrilling
point when you say
"We've done it again,"
and you can walk out
thinking
we have made a difference
In the face of
such discoveries
how can we say that
exploration is finished
that it has all been done?
There are places
on the planet
that we still haven't seen
There are ocean depths
we haven't been to
There are species yet
to be discovered
And there's always something
new on the horizon
We can never know everything
To be an explorer today is
to face the greatest era
of exploration ever
It's just beginning
We're just beginning
to open the doors
to see how many more
there are out there
I think the ultimate goal
really is not
to ever fall into some
false complacency
and think that we've made
whatever discoveries
there are to be made and
that we
our whole life, continue
to be this sense of
informed by this spirit of
discovery and exploration
On the cusp of
a new millennium
we can pause and look back
at what we have accomplished
Exploration has remade how
we see our planet
But true explorers will
never be satisfied
with what they see now
They will continue to rush
head-long into the future
...pushing the limits of
mind and body
whether they are diving
into the deepest oceans
uncovering artifacts
of antiquity
or saving the habitats
of endangered species
Our limits will become the
next generation's triumphs
One of these children might
walk on the surface of Mars
Another might explore and
solve the riddle of human
consciousness
The only guarantee is that
in every generation
there will be a daring few
who continue to dream
to be restless,
and who are willing to
risk it all to explore
the unknown
I was always curious
you know what was
the next yard like
what was it like
on the next street over
the next neighborhood
the next town
It just snowballs
Ever since I was a kid
I was interested in
animals
I really liked to
get up close
and personal with animals
I was a little boy
who grew up on the shore
lines of San Diego
I wanted to be Captain Nemo
I wanted to command
the Nautilus
Growing up in a small town
in Alabama
I never thought that
I would do this
Just amazing
I think there is
in all human begins
this essence of
exploration
this desire to explore
We all have this hidden
two-year-old in us
that wants to just kind of
reach up
and really feel the world
around us
I really think that there are
too many places to explore
too many things to discover
to sit around
If it is easy
it would have been done
before
I think there are plenty of
places to explore
A lot of those places
are going to be the most
difficult to sustain yourself
There's so much
of the planet
that is unexplored
that I can't imagine we're gonna be
out of work
any time soon
July 16, 1969
Apollo Eleven escapes
the earth's gravity
and sets its course for
the moon
Our urge to explore has
finally outgrown our
small planet
But as the people of
the world look up
the astronauts on board
look back
They marvel at earth
It looks as strange as
the place they're headed
Below them is a planet
still to be explored
The spirit of exploration
is as old as humanity itself
Brave people have always
ventured out into
the darkness
and come back to enlighten us
And in the last century
the pace of accomplishment
has been astonishing
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing
Norgay
first to summit Mount
Everest
Robert Peary and
Matthew Henson
first to the North Pole
Amelia Earhart? first woman
to fly solo across
the Atlantic
That's one small step
for man...
And a thousand years from
now
they will still know
the name Neil Armstrong
But has everything been
discovered?
Is the age of exploration
over?
This is the story of
ten explorers
who believe that the spirit
of exploration still
thrives
It is the story of what
compels them to venture out
time and again
into the unknown
Ian Baker believes that at
the end of the millennium
there are still places on
earth
that have never been named
that have never been
plotted on a map
Somewhere in this vast
Tibetan jungle
he hopes to find a giant
waterfall
He's been searching for
over a decade
Ancient Buddhist prayer
books hold that deep
within a gorge is a cascade
that shrouds
the passageway to paradise
I first heard about it
from a very old lama
who had spent much of
his life
meditating in these
very remote valleys
He had always told me
the greatest of these was
a place called Pemako
in the far southeastern
part of Tibet
Baker made six expeditions
in search of the falls
He has never managed
to reach them
He is not the first to
fail
In 1924, British Botanist
Frank Kingdon-
Ward tried to find
the falls
only to be defeated
by the terrain
Where he failed
Baker hopes to succeed
He knows Kingdon-Ward was
unable to
descend the sheer cliffs
along more than five miles
of the gorge
Could the falls be located
in this unexplored area?
Baker and his expedition
partner
Ken Storm, have won
the trust of local hunters
who will lead them down
paths
that no Westerner has ever
followed
The gorge is a treacherous
place teeming with leeches
stinging nettles and
deadly snakes
Why do people like
Baker risk
so much to explore the
unknown?
I don't feel
that I'm different from
anybody else in the sense
that I think the spirit of
exploration is intrinsic
to human nature
Exploration is really one
of the very
very few things that makes
us human
Once you get a taste of it
you can't go back to
the simple life
I did become tensely
irritated at the endless rain
being soaking wet never
drying out
Leeches all over your legs
and just scratch marks all
over your bodies
and face just because half
the time
you're moving up through
a pathless terrain
But I think anybody
who's given to a life of
exploration
has to feel some sense of
embrace of this kind of
wild existence
where, you know the
comforts
of the civilized world are
suddenly stripped from us
As a young boy, Baker
loved adventure
He yearned to be
the youngest
to reach the top of famous
mountains
And he drew pictures
revealing dreams of
mystical places
places with hidden
waterfalls
My more recent explorations
in the Himalayas
have been in that sense
a continuation
of my earliest childhood
activities
which was really to
explore the forests
and marshes behind the
house
There is still a first out
there for Baker to claim
But reaching the great
falls of the Tsang-po
is an epic journey away
Now that the weather is
clearing a little bit
we're going to try to
make our way down into
this unknown section
And for 75 years
it has been believed to be
an impenetrable wilderness
Ian Baker's expedition to
find the falls has been
slowed...
...to a mile a day
In this terrain
the difference between
life and death
can be a single careless
step
We had on previous
expeditions
seen from a long distance
what appeared to be
a waterfall
But even when we were
a thousand feet
above it a year earlier
we were still not able to
determine whether
in fact, this was the great
falls of the Tsang-po
that Kingdon-Ward had been
looking for
And there was the sense
that
unless you went down to
the falls itself
we would never be able to
answer or resolve that
question
The jungle thickens
The terrain gets
even steeper
Then, finally
in the distance
they hear the river falling
All of the Tsang-po
pouring into the energy
Unbelievable
A century of speculation
is over
They have filled in
one of the last blank
spots on the map
These are, indeed, the
great falls of the Tsang-po
They name it the Hidden
Falls of Dorje Phagmo?
after the region's
most powerful goddess
What this discovery of
the waterfall has done
actually, is to evoke from
people
almost a subconscious
need that
we all have for magical
places in the world
for a sense that there are
still places to be discovered
I don't understand
why people think that
exploration is finished
For me it's really just
started
I think there's plenty of
places to explore
A lot of those places are
gonna be the most
difficult places
to really sustain yourself
within and make
a real contribution
I love this expression:
The last place on earth
And that's what I'm really
trying to bring back
The best explorers
have always brought back to us
with their words
with their pictures
that last place on earth
When the film Congorilla
opened on Broadway in 1932,
audiences flocked to the theater.
Most people had never seen
moving pictures of such exotic animals
You are going to see
and hear the first pictures
in natural sound
ever made in the jungles
of Central Africa
There will be the roar
of the lion
herds of elephants
millions of flamingos
and rivers alive with
the vicious crocodiles
The film was made by Martin
Johnson and his wife, Osa
In 1917, they quit the
Vaudeville Circuit
left their New York home
and began two decades of
exploring and filmmaking
When they began
shooting Congorilla in 1929
wildlife was so plentiful they
needed only to drive into the bush and
turn on their cameras.
The abundance is long gone
To capture what remains, it took
National Geographic photographer
Nick Nichols
weeks of brutal trekking
through the jungles of Central Africa
I have no interest in
wildlife photography for
the sake of it
It's just not justifiable
in this time when
we've got so many habitats
and creatures that are
endangered
In our case,
we're going out in
an unexplored part
of the African forest
We really know
what's out there
but we want to come back
and show everybody and say
"Let's save it."
The job that I do is
considered
one of the most romantic
jobs on earth
Everybody wants to do it
But nobody sees it for
what it really is
being hot, insects
diseases
People see the glamour of
the finished product
or the glamour of the travel
and they want to do it
But they don't really want
to do it
Why do explorers subject
themselves to such hardship?
You've got to have something
that drives you
because you are getting
into the suffering
the hardships, being away
from home
So if you don't feel like
you've got a mission
I don't think you can put
those feet
in front of you when
the going gets tough
There's difficult cultures
difficult political
situations
difficult physical
circumstances
and no guarantee of
anything except that
there's gonna be
an endless number of hurdles
that you're gonna have to
pass over
to pull something out
and make it meaningful
And that is enough to
really deter any
but the most hardened
explorer
There's fleas that burrow
into your feet and lay eggs
You gotta deal with those
You may get 100 a night
that you gotta deal with
There's other animals that
go into your privates and
burrow away
Shuffling in the mud,
looking for animals
There was heat and there
is piranhas
and there is caimans and
there is crocodiles
and killer bees
Then there is the mosquitoes
that bite you
and cause all the different
kinds of malaria
Then there is flies biting
that cause blindness and
elephantitis
It's just endless
It's five a.m.
and I'm going out to
photograph in the fig tree
that [Neil] just rigged
a tree platform in
I'm trying to get pictures
of monkeys and birds
which are real elusive
I have no assurance that
they'll be there
I just hope so
I studied art as a young man
I was a painter and
I wasn't very good at it
As soon as I picked up
a camera
and took
my first photographs
when I was 18 in college
I decided at that moment
that's what I was gonna do
There's something in nature
that is out of our realm
of control
I'm not sure what it is
It's an essence
That's what I have been
looking for all my life
Who knows how to get
a frog to stand up?
It is this word "wild"
which means not controlled
What's behind that is
trying to
find an essence that
I can't define
but we all know what it is
We all know that there's
something edgy out there
that keeps us whole
because we come from
wildness, too
In 1997, when Nichols was
photographing tigers in India
his journey embodied
the new creed of exploration
Unlike earlier explorers
he is not driven by a desire
to return with animals
in cages or trophy heads...
but with pictures?
pictures he hopes will save
these animals from
extinction
When I see an elephant in
a zoo or a tiger in a zoo
I'm looking at a specimen
If we had five gazillion
tigers in zoos
we have no tigers
If they're not out walking
around in the forest
that forest is
not even whole
Tigers are part
of the package, the chain
A tiger won't pose while
Nick snaps its portrait
So his crew rigs intricate
camera traps
to capture a tiger's image
They hope one of
the big cats
will trigger the
motion-sensors on the cameras
We're trying to find a way
to take pictures of tigers
on their terms.
Actually, the tigers are
taking their own pictures
That's what it gets down to
There's no humans here
they come along
whenever they want to
We really wanted just to
find a way
to get into their world
it's such a secret world
Weeks pass? No tigers.
Go in!
Oh, my God, yes!
Yes!
C'mon!
Go in!
My mission is definitely
to look at the earth
as a finite thing and say
let's celebrate this thing
Let's find a way to realize
that it's so precious and
so fragile
The new edge to exploration
is that
we must know how
the planet works
Like Nichols,
Sylvia Earle is driven
by the desire to preserve
what she finds
What drives me to explore?
It's the need to understand
what we're doing
so that we perhaps might
be able to do better
in the future
Earle is the Chuck Yeager
of oceanography
a pioneer of undersea
exploration
Five species of marine life have been
named after her
Earle was raised on a farm in New Jersey
in a time when girls weren't expected go
grow up and have professions, let alone
become explorers.
For me, my playground was
the sea
I knew from the moment
I first saw a horseshoe crab
sort of crawling up
a beach
in New Jersey that I had
to know more
about where it came from
and how it lived
and how it spent its
days and nights
And I've been intrigued
with that ever since
Seventy percent of the
earth's surface is water
but most of it remains
as unexplored as
the New World
was to Columbus
No place on the planet is more difficult
to explore than the deep
There's nothing more
frustrating for a biologist
a scientist such as I
than to go down to 150 feet
or even push the limits
and go over to the edge
of a drop-off
into the sea and know that
you just have to stop
People have always dreamed
of exploring the ocean
But for centuries anything
below a few hundred feet
was impossible to reach...
...until William Beebe and
Otis Barton invented
the bathysphere
a steel ball they hoped
would take them a half-mile
below the surface
It took four years
of testing
before the bathysphere
was ready
Finally in 1934,
Beebe and Barton
jammed themselves in
not knowing if it would be
submarine or a coffin
As they were slowly lowered
into the depths
the pressure built up
to more than 1,300 pounds
per square inch
It was so cold,
Beebe recalled
it was like sitting on
a cake of ice
But they did it
The bathysphere went a
half-mile below the surface
The record stood for
Building on the accomplishments
of Beebe and Barton
Earle has pushed the limits
of underwater exploration
In 1979, untethered and
alone
she dove to over 1,200 feet
It was as daring a feat
as the early space walks
Back in 1970,
it was uncommon for women
to do some of the sorts
of things
that I found myself
hankering to do
There were no women
astronauts going to the moon
In fact, there were no women
astronauts at all
at that point in time
And aquanauts were also
an iffy sort of enterprise
Earle was one of five women
selected to join a team
of aquanauts
who lived and studied in
an underwater laboratory
anchored in the Caribbean
They called us aquabelles,
they called us aquababes
They had a hard time
calling us aquanauts
I didn't care what they
called us
as long as they let us go,
and they did
Earle has never let
anything stop her
Her passion for the ocean
is too strong
For me the lure of the deep
is the lure of the unknown
It's that curiosity that
all children have
but scientists never
lose
you just have to know
what is going on
In order to satisfy that
curiosity
Earle, like so many
explorers
is at the mercy of
technology
For years, she has teamed up with
engineer Graham Hawkes. Together,
they have helped revolutionize
underwater exploration
You know, it's said that
there're more footprints
on the moon than
in the deep ocean
That's kind of literally
true
Once you step foot
in the oceans
you are just back where
early man was
you're back looking at
a piece of the planet no
one's seen before
When Earle and Hawkes
conceived of deep flight
a new fast-moving submarine
they had to build it
themselves
There is no NASA of the
deep seas
You know, I was born to be
an engineer looking back
I grew up with
the nickname professor
I apparently was always
taking things apart
Numerous rockets,
numerous experiments,
numerous little explosions
My parents were both
from London
My father was postman
And the small part of
London Tootting
the wrong side of the
railway tracks
went to the wrong schools
Hawkes was the first in
his family to go to college
Over the past 20 years
he has become
one of the leading
inventors of submersibles
Hawkes's and Earle's dream
is to literally swim with
the fish
It's the counterpart
of flying
you fly into that other
atmosphere
There's this moment of discovery
that this is not
just water
this is water filled
with life
There are jellies,
there are fish,
there are eyes all around
There you go as an explorer
not alone for a moment...
not even for an instant
are you alone
Oh, my God, it's coming
right at me
Oh, my gosh
Oh!? Just so close.
He was just beautiful
Funded in part by the
National Geographic Society
Earle is now diving in
a remarkable new machine
It is the tool
for the next generation of
deep sea exploration
In July of 1969,
four simple words
expand forever the limits
of human potential
The eagle has landed
The calmness of the voice
masks the terror of
the moment
Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin
have only seconds of fuel
left
when they land on the moon
Armstrong's pulse races
at 156 beats per minute
That's one small step
for man,
one giant leap for mankind
The triumph seemed complete
but landing was
the easier part
NASA couldn't guarantee
the safe return
of the astronauts
President Richard Nixon
had prepared a eulogy
in case the men were
stranded on the moon's
surface
It read, in part:
"These brave men know that
there is no hope for their
recovery
But they also know that
there is hope for mankind
in their sacrifice."
Our greatest achievements
are often balanced on
the edge of catastrophe
For 20 years, Robert Peary
and his expedition partner
Matthew Henson,
had been risking their lives
to walk to the North Pole
On the fourth expedition
temperatures dropped to
minus 63 degrees
They were forced to eat
their dogs for food
But the men relentlessly
advanced and
on April 6, 1909,
they became the first to
stand at the top of the world
"The Pole at last,
Peary wrote in his journal
"The prize of three centuries
Mine at last."
As much as Peary and Henson
dreamed of the North Pole
and Armstrong the moon
explorers have dreamed of
climbing the world's
highest mountain
For decades, the slopes of
Everest had claimed
the life of one climber
after another
Then, in 1953...
Mount Everest has been
conquered by members
of the British expedition
...Tenzing Norgay and
Edmund Hillary
overcame the cold and
the thin air to stand on
the summit of Everest
No one else will ever
be able to claim the title:
"First to the roof of
the world."
The drive to explore
endures
But have today's explorers
been born too late?
I'd love to have been an
explorer in an earlier era
where I could have been
the first man to cross
the Congo
or the first man
to penetrate
the heart of Australia
or climb Everest
It would have been
wonderful
Exploration a century ago
was about assigning names
to places
and I think it's become
more about assigning meaning
You really have to push
yourself to the edge
That's why it hasn't been
done before
I mean, if it was easy,
it would have been done
before
An explorer is someone
who pursues the epic journey
a person who has a dream
who prepares to fulfill
that dream
assembles a team, goes out
into the ocean
overcomes the tests of
the mind and the heart
attains the truth and
returns to society to
share the truth
That's the epic journey
and that's what
the explorer does
Deep sea explorer,
Bob Ballard
has spent a career in search
of tragedy and disaster
For years, he longed to
find the Titanic
It was the most elegant
luxury liner of its time
Titanic was built to last
forever
On April 10, 1912, she set sail on
her maiden voyage
Five days later
she disappeared into
the cold waters
of the North Atlantic
More than 1,500 perished
People believed the ship
was gone forever
and that Ballard's quest
to find her was futile
But he proved them wrong
In 13,000 feet of water,
Ballard found the Titanic
He made history come to life
People could see the past
floating before them
a romantic era stolen away
by an iceberg and now
returned
I don't go to sea
unless I am really
convinced I can succeed
I have decided not to do
a lot of expeditions
People say,
"Why don't you find Amelia
Earhart's airplane?"
Fat chance.
I won't take on a job unless
I have a good shot at it
Ballard did not stop with
the Titanic
He found the Nazi battleship Bismarck...
...explored the torpedoed
luxury liner Lusitania...
Contact. That's a ship
It's definitely you
My only love
...and located
the aircraft carrier Yorktown
sunk in the World
War II battle of Midway
I have little boys come up
to me
and say they wish I would
stop exploring
because there isn't going
to be anything left for them
And I try to remind them
that I've only seen
one-tenth
of one percent of
the deep ocean
so there's plenty there
This time, Ballard is
exploring further back
in time than he has ever
gone before...
two thousand years ago
when Roman ships criss-crossed
the Mediterranean
They were small vessels
at the mercy of the sea
Many of them never made it
home
To help him find
the sunken ships
Ballard has enlisted
the help of a Navy submarine
The NR-1 was used during
the Cold War
for missions so secret
the Navy still won't talk
about them
Now the sub is hunting for
a Roman galley
that sank to the ocean floor
Captain, ship's fit
for dive
You have permission
to submerge ship
Dive! Dive!
For hundreds of years
scientists have looked in
the ocean for our history
And for most of that time
they've only been able to
look a very short distance
And what we're trying to
accomplish is something
that has never been done
before
and that is to try and
excavate a ship of antiquity
that is thousands of feet
beneath the sea
The NR-1 hits thick mud
The sub's arm is unable to
dig below the surface
Do the wooden hulls
of Roman vessels
still exist just beyond reach
or has time stolen them away?
Will this be Ballard's first failure?
You can be lucky,
but you work for it
You know, you cannot
just go
and dig and discover
something
No! You have to stay day
and night and work very hard
And luck will come to you
And that's why luck cannot
come to a lazy explorer
Like Robert Ballard,
Egyptologist Zahi Hawass
is an explorer of deep time
He has spent a career
searching the sands
of the Giza Plateau
One of his most remarkable
finds began with an accident
when a horse, galloping
past his excavation site
plunged its hoof through
the sand
Below lay a vaulted tomb,
sealed in the time of
the pharaohs
Inside, Hawass glimpsed
eternity
Because of the size
of the tomb
because of the unique shape
of the vaulted ceiling
and also because it was
cased inside with plaster
then I believe this is
the man
who was in charge of
the whole administration
of the workmen
This is the man who wanted
to be sure that
all these people live in
a good living
and they go early in
the morning to work
and they come by the sunset
and they live in
the village,
and at the same time
when they die, there is
a tomb for everyone
Besides the foreman's tomb
Hawass and his crews
unearthed more than
an entire cemetery
of workers
For centuries,
the pyramid builders were
thought to be slaves
a captive labor force
cringing under the whip
This discovery shattered
that myth
For explorers like Hawass
the possibilities of
discovery seem limitless
The sands of the desert
are constantly shifting
Artifacts, hidden from one
generation of archeologists
can suddenly be revealed
to the next
In 1998, a team under
Hawass's supervision
made a startling find: A tomb, unseen
untouched for thousands of years
It is beautiful,
the painting is so beautiful
It is very rare
We discover a lot of things
every day, everywhere
in Egypt
But everything,
almost 99 percent of what
we discover, is robbed
This is unique,
and this is rare,
because of one thing:
This is intact
Beneath a limestone lid,
they discover a sarcophagus
This is wonderful
The symbol of resurrection
Under the glare of
television lights
they struggle to remove
the heavy lid
Have the contents inside
decayed and rotted?
They crane forward, peer inside and a gift
from the first
millennium B.C.: a mummy dressed
in a shroud of bead work
portraying the gods of the afterlife
Hieroglyphs around the coffin tell a
story from the final glory days of
ancient Egypt.
Buried here is a
nobleman, a member
of the pharaoh's court
His name was Lufaa
He is the director
of the palace
He was near to the king
The king lives in
the palace
This is the man that is
used everyday
to know the throne is fine
your majesty
The ladies, or the wife,
your main wife
she's not coming today
to see you
You can meet this official
today
the dining room is set,
wine is there
we will make the party
tonight
That is the man that does
all the arrangements
at the palace
He makes the palace life
Hawass's explorations have
given us
a more detailed picture
of the past
of who we are and where we
come from
An explorer is someone's
who trying to find answers
to basic truths
I think all of us want to
know those answers
Certainly, we want to know
who we are and
where we came from and
where we're going
And I think most people
think about those questions
but very few of them spend
a career
trying to find answers to
those things
For weeks,
Robert Ballard has been
searching for history
in the depths of
the Mediterranean
He has not been able to
find the Roman ships
he believes sank in
these waters
He cannot afford to fail
A single expedition can
cost millions of dollars
Hold shipwreck
Holy mackerel
At last...
Look at that!
...3,000 feet beneath
the waves...
fragile amphora...
jugs that held wine
dried fish and olive oil
Instead of finding the
amphora sort of randomly
scattered throughout
this area
they are, in fact,
concentrated in
very narrow lines
one amphora after another,
hundreds of them
As Ballard and the captain
of the NR-1 plot the find
the final tragic moments for
the Roman ship are revealed
It must have been caught
in a fierce storm
They began to off-load
their cargo
as fast as they could
throwing the amphoras off
one side of the ship and
off of the other
This is probably the width
of the ship
the separation between
these two rows
Two miles of amphoras were
being thrown over the side
until finally the ship
went under and ultimately
sank here
Ballard deploys a scavenger
sub named Jason
to bring the 2,000-year-old
artifacts to the surface
Robert Ballard has proven
that we can dive into
the deepest oceans
and resurrect the sunken
stories of the past
The key is that
you plug away
you slug away,
you slug away
and then there's
this moment of discovery
And it's so exhilarating
It's just
the greatest natural
high known to a human race
And once you've
experienced that
you want to experience it
again
There is so much of the
planet that's unexplored
that I can't imagine
we're going to be out
of work anytime soon
Exploration really has that
element of discovering
something new
You make it a discipline
to observe
to document, to record
what you see
The old style of explorer
it was about conquering
something
about, you know,
putting your flag on it
about getting control,
to be the master of
I think the real difference
between adventure and
exploration
is that exploration is
adventure with a purpose
Michael Davie is just
starting to explore our world
In 1997, at the age of 22
he trekked from Cape Town,
South Africa,
to Cairo Egypt
a 5,000-mile journey that
took him seven months
Davie uses a video camera
to explore more than
geography
he explores culture
and people
His journey epitomizes the
explorer within us all
Do you think life here
in Botswana is difficult?
Yes
Why?
There are no jobs
But your future, does your
future look good?
Yes, I think so
Peter Pan was my hero,
you know
I wanted to live
a Peter Pan existence
I wanted to fly away to
Never-Never Land
and run wild with
the Lost Boys
You know,
I think it's every kid's
dream to get out there
and bash his way through
the jungle
and have wild adventures
and extreme encounters
and get himself into as
much trouble as possible
And now I get paid to
do that
which is the greatest
privilege of my life
Man, this place is just
amazing, just amazing
An explorer is somebody
who has to look deeper into
things than things were
looked into before
It's about going into
territory
which geographically
has been explored before
but emotionally perhaps
has not
Mozambique at last
I just hope I don't step
on any land mines
Red danger sign
Danger! Mines!
What kind of damage could
a mine like this do?
Take off a lower leg or
take off a limb
It's primarily a weapon
that's designed to maim
rather than kill, although
there's every chance
in the world
that it would kill a small
child or an elderly person
One of the most inspiring
people
I've ever met in my life
was a five-year-old girl
named Isabel
She was a land mine victim
living in Mozambique
And I think I forgot that I
had the camera in my hand
and suddenly I was looking
at a five-year-old girl
fighting to learn
to walk again
That was an incredibly
potent and
emotional moment for me
and I don't think it's one
that I will ever forget
When I turned 21,
my parents and I were on
a camping trip
and we were sitting around
the campfire
And we decided to count
the number of times
we'd moved in my 21 years
And we had moved home
And at that point I
realized that
although I wanted to become
an explorer of some kind
I had already spent
my entire life doing that
Danger certainly adds
an element of spice
to what I do and
I love that
I love the sense that
there's something at stake
Today is a hell of a lot
tougher than
yesterday was and it's
been quite scary, actually
We've been surrounded by
a forest fire
I need the adrenaline,
yeah, I mean
otherwise I'd still be
at law school studying
contracts
Hello
What's the problem?
I don't have to quote
this camera
I know my rights
I think the first time
I got into real trouble
I wasn't enjoying it all
I was absolutely terrified
But once I saw myself get
through that situation
I think that's probably
when the addiction
kicked in
Okay, well you don't have
to hassle me all the time
I know I'm foolish and I
know I'm reckless sometimes
But, you know
there is a certain amount of
appeal in riding that edge
You can't really understand
life or
appreciate it or
understand it or
the scope of it until
you've flirted with death
a little but
understood the other side
Exploration is often
a solitary venture
a journey to understand
yourself
and your place
in the world
Heidi Howkins craves
dangerous places
For her, risking death on
a thin cornice of snow
is how she explores life
Who could have guessed that
this little girl would
grow up
to be a high altitude
mountaineer?
There was one influence
in her life
that might have given you
a clue? her father
She describes him as
an eccentric fitness fanatic
He passed along his passion
for ultra-long distance
races
But Howkins quickly
got bored
She wanted something more
For me, those are just
physical challenges
They're not mental
challenges
Yes, sure, you get to
the point where
to continue running
after 24 hours
you've got to have
some kind of mental urge
But it's, there's no danger
There's no risks,
there's no fears
But risk and fear are at
the core of mountaineering
While an earlier generation
of climbers
would have been satisfied
with conquering one
world-class peak in a year
Howkins hopes to conquer
two: Everest and K2
without the aid of
supplemental oxygen
It really doesn't matter
that I'm female when
I'm up there
What matters is that
I'm a good climber
And that's a great feeling
That's something that
definitely gives me a charge
It'd be nice to share that
with other women
It's just that there aren't
that many of us
My legs are saying,
"No more up!"
Howkins knows all too well
that once she sets foot on
a mountain
she puts her life in peril
While climbing Kanchenjunga
in 1997
she was struck by a massive
avalanche
Although buried
in deep snow
she found the strength to
claw her way to the surface
In 1998, her expedition was
hit by another avalanche
The slabs of snow missed
her
but she was helpless as
members of her team were
swept away
Two were killed
Despite the danger
Howkins returns year after
year to these mountains
You have to confront your
own mortality
like that every day on
an expedition
if not every hour,
or every minute
It becomes something
that you know sort
of like your fingers
and your toes
You're certain that
it's there
and you're fully aware
of it
You're catapulted into
a totally different realm
when you're facing that
fear
that terror, that mystery,
the unknown
Why do climbers like Howkins
scour the earth
for extreme vertical places?
Why do they eagerly seek
out life on the edge?
Why do I do this if it's
so cold and
so uncomfortable and scary?
Because I don't want life
to be easy
You know, I find greater
meaning in my life
when I go out and struggle
to get something I want
On Baffin Island, 300 miles
north of the Arctic Circle
there is a wall of granite
more than twice
as high as the Empire State
building
It's not the world's highest,
it's hardly even famous
But no one has climbed it
For four world class
climbers
that's an irresistible
challenge
I think, to me personally
true adventure requires
an uncertain outcome
It's gotta have this big
question mark hanging over it
It's probably the hardest
piece of big wall
climbing that I've done
Maybe that's what
it's all about
pushing yourself so far
out there
that you can't really
turn around
You have to keep going
Basically, a trip like
this is a journey
It's a journey of exploration
into a beautiful wilderness
like Baffin Island
I don't have a death wish,
I have a life wish
And these trips bring you
closer to life
than anything I can imagine
Howkins's journey is becoming
increasingly difficult
She is approaching
the death zone
Above 26,000 feet
the air is so thin
that the brain is deprived
of oxygen
It becomes hard to think
straight
Every fiber in your body
is telling you to stop
to sit down, to die,
essentially
You've moved beyond your
survival instinct
There has to be something
beyond reason
that's pushing you
to continue moving
especially to continue
climbing up
Howkins isn't the first
woman
to try climbing both Everest
and K2 in a single year
In 1995,
Alison Hargreaves had
successfully climbed Everest
and had reached the summit
of K2
But on her descent
she was caught in a storm
and died on the mountain
Howkins herself is
in trouble
Illness and weather stop
her ascent
I can't describe how I
really feel right now
without using four-letter
words
I mean, I'm like,
I've got a fever
I'm sitting at 21,000 feet
I slept for about one hour
last night
and the other 11 hours
I hacked up all kinds of
lung gunk
I've got bronchitis or
something
She is forced to admit
defeat
give up the summit,
and descend
To deny that the summit
is important
isn't what I'm trying to do
It's just that it's not as
important as the way
in which I climb
The journey that happens
on the way
to the summit is more
important
It sounds clich,
but it's true
It's not whether you
reach the summit, it's how
It's not what you do
it's how you do it
that matters
The best explorers are
always imagining
the next journey,
the next goal
But what are the personal
costs of such relentless?
I'm on the road a lot
It's very difficult
to develop roots
to put out roots in
any one community
because I'm not here for
enough of the year
to really get to know people
I regret that I didn't
have more time
with my children
when they were young
because I chose to go out
on expedition
The negative side is
obviously being away from home
I love my family
And I love land
I think the most important
thing
I've learned about
exploring the ocean
is how much I love land
You know, I have absolutely
no regrets about it
Whatever one might
conventionally see
as a sacrifice is not
a sacrifice
and that it really entails
not seeking out security
above all else
I think my biggest
sacrifices are the fact
that I'm going to die
real young
because I've just been
worn out
from these tropical
diseases
That's my biggest
sacrifice
The Llanos,
wild heart of Venezuela
For the early explorers
who dared enter this
untamed place
no creature loomed larger
than South America's giant
serpent...
Look out, Jimmy!
Hold the head, hold it!
Explorers spun tales of
intent on human flesh
Jim is black in the face,
almost done for
Exploration now is very
different than it used to be
Early explorers would go
and conquering things
conquering people,
many times even destroying
the things that they were
exploring
Exploration now has a much
more respectful meaning
and taste to it
A barefoot explorer,
Jesus Rivas is hunting
the anaconda
not for sport,
but to understand this
mysterious beast
Rivas explores a dangerous
landscape
for the anaconda rules this
swamp with lethal efficiency
It's meal of choice is
the capybara
a giant rodent that can
weigh in at over 140 pounds
The snake kills with power,
not poison
It wraps its coils so
tightly around the capybara
that the animal cannot
breathe
so tightly that its blood
can no longer circulate
It will take the snake six
hours to ingest this meal
The anaconda is strong
enough to overwhelm and
kill a person
Rivas, however, is obsessed
with getting
as close as he can to these
creatures
There's no telling how many
hours of fruitless sun
I got on my head
and after six, eight hours
looking for a snake
in the swamp and nothing
happens
But if you're stubborn
enough and if you go for
it and you try and try
and eventually you
accomplish it
The time comes when you
step on something
and your foot bounces back
and there's this big animal
underneath you
Hurry, hurry
Are you losing your grip?
In a second, I will
Oh, it's a big mama
Come here and get
a better grip
It is a wonderful animal
It is an animal that,
if anything
has to inspire admiration
and awe more than
any other thing
Godzilla!? We are having
a ball, aren't we?
Rivas and his wife,
biologist Rene Owens
have captured and studied
more than 800 snakes
Their exploration
funded in part by the
National Geographic Society
is a first
People ask me why it has
not been studied before
And the reason is that
I don't think anybody
thought it was possible
You can't find them, they
are too hard to get around
we can't subdue them
they are a very hard
animal to study
and that is why they
haven't been studied
Wait, wait, wait here
To crack the code of
this strange beast
Rivas searches
for breeding balls
massive coils of mating
snakes
He plants radio transmitters
to track potential mothers
Ever since I was a kid,
I always loved the wild
I had this urge of going
out into the wild
into the forest,
into the sea, into the ocean
into whatever was
a good natural habitat
Oh, you want to kiss me,
don't you?
I'm not your lover
My mother, when I was a kid,
called, had this word
for me
It was "pata caliente"
which means hot feet
because she couldn't stop
me from going out
and looking for
interesting things to do
Okay, I'm gonna pull
the whole thing
to see what's going on
Rivas and Owens have struck
anaconda gold
a breeding ball
This is their Everest,
their North Pole
To reproduce, as many as
a dozen male anacondas
will wrap themselves
around a single female
Rivas and Owens have
just begun to
unravel the secrets of this
communal mating ritual
The first time I laid hands
on an anaconda
it was a large female next
to a bridge
it was a massive animal
When I put my hands around
it and couldn't grip it
my fingers could feel
just pure muscle
It was unbelievable
It was the thing that really
hooked me about the animal
Nice female
It's beautiful
Look at those colors
Out there, somewhere
in the swamp
Rivas believes there are
giant anacondas
beasts of monstrous
proportions
He dreams of discovering
such a serpent one day
I've thought a lot about
what to do
if I found this animal
that is too big for me
to catch
but is too big for me to
let it go
I don't know what I'll do
It will be some tough fight
I don't know
who's gonna win
They're all my family
Rivas is following
in the footsteps
of a noble tradition of
naturalist as explorer...
...people like
Charles Darwin
who set sail to
the Galapagos Islands
and saw birds in a
whole new way
He returned to England
with the theory of
evolution...
...or Jane Goodall
who lived for decades in
the African wilderness
and with a patient gaze
explored the world
and the mind of
the chimpanzee
She has revolutionized our
understanding of animals
She witnessed chimps doing
things
no one had seen before
like making tools
Her explorations have
shown us
how closely connected
we are to the natural world
Since Goodall began her
studies 40 years ago
the world's population
has nearly doubled
Blink and wild habitat
vanishes
Explorers, like
herpetologist Brady Barr
must act as emergency room
surgeons
and move quickly to
save endangered species
I would give anything to
go back in time
and see what the planet
was like
when it was more in balance
before there were so
many humans on the planet
Something's wrong with
the Everglades
It's an ecosystem in peril
It's dying
And the alligator is
a crucial component
in that ecosystem
In the Everglades,
the 'gators breed less
frequently
their growth is stunted
To find out why
he's exploring the belly
of the beast, literally
You have to know
what's important in
the alligator's diet
before you can get a handle
on the bigger picture
you know,
what's really happening with
these alligators out here
To investigate their
culinary habits
Brady must first find
and catch one of these swamp
dwellers; no easy task
Scary situations are just
part of the job
just the nature of
the situation
and what I do and
where I go
If you're gonna work
on something
that can eat you or bite
you and kill you
I mean that's just
there's no way to get away
from the danger
It's just a part of
the business
Right there!
Okay, try to keep
the light right on it
I'm gonna try to move up
to it
Oh yeah, I got him,
I got him
See that?
Okay, now are you ready
to give it a try?
Now, when I tell you to move
move fast
Okay! It's always a little
nerve-racking
to tape the jaws up
This alligator's not
that big
I've always been fascinated
with alligators
even as a small child
But I grew up in the
cornfields of southern Indiana
There weren't many
alligators there
I went to graduate school
in south Florida
where there were a lot of
alligators
And I saw these large
carnivores
living in close contact
with humans
His explorations are
proving that
this close contact is toxic
for the alligator
Alligators in the Everglades
grow very, very slowly
A seven-foot animal 100
miles north of here
on Lake Okeechobee might
be eight years old
A seven-foot alligator
here in the Everglades
this alligator? might be
Maybe it's mercury
poisoning
maybe it's quality of
the diet
That's what we're looking
into
Maybe it's pollution
Changes in hydrology have
changed
what the alligator is
eating
It's a complicated picture
and, you know
hopefully we'll shed
a little light on it
with this stomach content
data
We're going to put
this garden hose into
the mouth of the alligator
down into the stomach
fill it with water and
then May Lynn's going to
give it
the Heimlich maneuver just
like a choking person
Hit it hard.
Everything you got
I'm gonna pull the hose
this time
One, two, three, go!
I didn't feel anything
come out
Look at this
There's a seven-foot
alligator
and here's the contents
of its stomach
One snail with the tissue
still attached
And here is two, three
remains of four snails
Before we started this
research
people said, "Oh, alligators
eat birds and fish and
you know, pull down deer."
We're finding they eat a
lot of snakes and
believe it or not,
they also eat snails
That's how these alligators
are making a living
out here in the Everglades
It's a tough place to live
If I was an alligator
I wouldn't want to live in
the Everglades
Paul Sereno is famous
one of the most famous bone
hunters in the world
Just 41 years old
he's already made more
significant discoveries
than most paleontologists
make in a lifetime
Time and again
Sereno has headed out into
the unknown
and come back with
the bones of dinosaurs
that no one has seen before
For Sereno, 1,000 years
is a blip in time
His finds allow us
to imagine history on
a geological scale
history that is more than
How many chances
do you have to make a mark
in the world
to change the way we look
at a continent
the way the world was
With one expedition
we really have the chance
And the only way that
we can do that is
really, by performing beyond
what we think we can do
This time Sereno is
on an expedition deep into
the Sahara
It's a harsh landscape
Sand storms, relentless
heat and gun-toting bandits
will make the next four
months a brutal experience
Paleontology often finds
the most remote places
because they are places
that are raw earth
places difficult to live in
places often unexplored
And the more unexplored
the better
the better chance you have
of finding something
that nobody's ever seen
before
Just getting to
the fossil beds
is a grueling cross-country
road trip
The journey is not
just arduous
it's potentially lethal
A civil war in this area
ended recently
Travelers were killed on
this road the week before
I have told you that
we might require an armed
guard before we left
I didn't know the details
of it
I didn't know what happened
last week
That was in the future then
We have items that people
want
items that they have
killed people for
It's a personal risk
going out there
There's no question
about it
If something happens
or if people feel that
whatever their obligations are
whatever their personal
feelings are
that they've reached that
point and want to go back
I don't blame anybody for
that circumstance
I will help you leave, you
know, in a timely fashion
It's the classic explorer's
dilemma:
How much are you willing to
risk to achieve your goal?
Are you willing to risk
your life?
Although the team will
need armed guards
no one abandons
the expedition
no one wants to pass up
the chance of making
a major find
After five days and 14 flat
tires
they finally reach their
destination
Okay, show me the money
Where're the bones?
Although the world Sereno
explores vanished millions
of years ago
it still lives in
his imagination
You've got to look at
something
that doesn't look like a
lake and imagine back to
what it was like as a lake
What this little fragment
here is telling you is that
there were fish there
There were trees
This was an area
where there was a chance
that your prize possession
a dinosaur or a crocodile or
whatever you're looking for
could have gotten buried
there
I think I inspire in part
by example in the field
I wouldn't ask anybody
to do anything
that I wouldn't be doing
myself
I can take the heat
so I'll work right through
the middle of the day
at 120 degrees out
on the site
the bone actually reaching
really, really hot
I really find that exploring
back in time is
one of the most fulfilling
things
because it forces you to
imagine
And at first, imagination
sounds unscientific
After all, we're observers
of hard evidence
But, in fact, imagination
is what
I think is the essence
of science
Dig by dig, explorers like
Sereno have transformed
pure imagination into
scientific fact
The team has been working
in heat often over
And beneath tons of
rock... a revelation.
We have a couple of
skeletons mixed at this site
That's a conclusion we've
drawn after a lot of work
What we discovered
when we first started
peeling back the mound here
is the hip region
and back bone of a very
large sauropod
Here's the vertebrae here
Sereno thinks the animals
were the victims of
a huge flood
The surging water piled
their multi-ton bodies
in a stack
and the river sediment
buried their bones
Although the sauropods are
a significant find,
Sereno is not satisfied
He sets out deeper into
the desert
in search of more bones
Go this way?
Okay, go this way.
As hard-working and
focused as he is now
it wasn't always the case
As a child, he broke school
windows with rocks
and even tried to derail
trains
The one thing that kept
him on track was bones
He's been fascinated with
them since childhood
At the new site,
the team can't contain
their excitement
There are bones everywhere
We've got an aranosaurus
We got therasaur
You've got a sauropod,
and a therapod
Five minutes
They can leave their pick
axes in the truck
Fossils are scattered around
on the surface of the desert
No one has been here
to scavenge the bones
Wow! Look at those ribs!
Beautiful!
Bone by bone
they uncover a predator
some kind of high-spined
dinosaur with a toothy jaw
Yeah, this is a piece of
aranosaurus
And then Sereno and
his team
make another stunning
discovery
Wow, this is great, Dave
That's a big ass claw!
It's a foot-long thumb claw
just laying there
on the surface
Anybody would have stopped
to pick it up
but no one was there
That's a particularly
exciting moment
sort of a chilling feeling
that reveals that there
are many
many places on the surface
of the earth
that have not been
investigated
And it's just the beginning
Bones of the animal
have been preserved
in the sand and rock
Sereno thinks
they have discovered
a new species of spinosaur
Not until they haul over
four tons of bones
back to the lab will they
know for sure
The expedition is over
but the journey of discovery
has just begun
Over the next year
in this basement laboratory
at the University
of Chicago
Sereno's team will
painstakingly reconstruct
the animal
I had a vision of something
I would like, I think
to see this animal down
low up front
as if it were almost fishing
with its hand
you know, with the claws
ready to grab something
It's just like you say,
to some extent
interacting with something
it's looking, it's ready
to go after something
We are literally
resurrecting a world
that once existed
When we set foot in Africa,
in the desert
there wasn't one skeleton
or skull that was known
well enough to reconstruct
from the whole Cretaceous
period
That's the last half of
dinosaur evolution
We now can stand among six
or seven of our recreations
Wow! That is really big
For the first time
in 100 million years
the spinosaur stands
It gives the public a sense
of a lost world
a time without humans,
something that's foreign,
strange...
a time when there were
animals that weren't like us
where we didn't influence
and control the world like
we do today
That's critical, I think
for understanding and also
preserving our future
The beast is 11 feet tall
And from the tip of its tail
to its fang-filled snout
it measures more than
I think there is a point
in an expedition when you
feel like
"We've done it!"
Unconsciously,
you realize there's
tension that's gone
a tension that drove you
to spend months organizing
and energizing a team to be
able to accomplish that
But there is a thrilling
point when you say
"We've done it again,"
and you can walk out
thinking
we have made a difference
In the face of
such discoveries
how can we say that
exploration is finished
that it has all been done?
There are places
on the planet
that we still haven't seen
There are ocean depths
we haven't been to
There are species yet
to be discovered
And there's always something
new on the horizon
We can never know everything
To be an explorer today is
to face the greatest era
of exploration ever
It's just beginning
We're just beginning
to open the doors
to see how many more
there are out there
I think the ultimate goal
really is not
to ever fall into some
false complacency
and think that we've made
whatever discoveries
there are to be made and
that we
our whole life, continue
to be this sense of
informed by this spirit of
discovery and exploration
On the cusp of
a new millennium
we can pause and look back
at what we have accomplished
Exploration has remade how
we see our planet
But true explorers will
never be satisfied
with what they see now
They will continue to rush
head-long into the future
...pushing the limits of
mind and body
whether they are diving
into the deepest oceans
uncovering artifacts
of antiquity
or saving the habitats
of endangered species
Our limits will become the
next generation's triumphs
One of these children might
walk on the surface of Mars
Another might explore and
solve the riddle of human
consciousness
The only guarantee is that
in every generation
there will be a daring few
who continue to dream
to be restless,
and who are willing to
risk it all to explore
the unknown