The Wonder List with Bill Weir (2015) s03e06 Episode Script
Peru: The Curse of Incan Gold
1
- [breathing heavily]
How the hell did
they pull this off?
[groans]
How did people
without steel
or wheels
or a written language
build a stairway to heaven
And a pleasure palace
for the ages?
Are you kidding?
Machu Picchu:
just one reason the Incas
must have been so proud,
so secure in their
impossible empire
from the Andes to the Amazon..
until the outsiders came,
carrying swords and germs,
to take their gold
and end their reign.
- [whistling]
- And the last Incas
could never have imagined
how the outsiders
would just keep coming
and how the curse
of Inca gold
would never end.
Oh, wow.
Oh, my goodness.
My name is Bill Weir,
and I'm a storyteller.
I've reported
from all over the world,
and I have seen so much chang.
[upbeat rock music]
So I made a list
of the most wonderful places
to explore
right before they change
forever.
♪
This is "The Wonder List."
We think we are so smart
with our towers
and our highways,
but how great
would our cities be
if we had to build them
without tools?
Could we stack rocks
the size of houses
using only wit and muscle,
build cities atop mountains
using only sweat and the star?
Well, the ancient
South Americans could,
and long before Columbus
set sail,
they built an empire
as big as two Californias.
They mined silver
and gold by the tons,
laid enough good roads
to circle the earth,
but then, in a relative blin,
they were gone.
And now a lost
civilization lives on
mainly in the bucket lists
of countless modern wanderer.
Yes, if you hope to keep up
with the Indiana Joneses,
Machu Picchu is on your list.
It is the most popular ruin
in South America,
and that scares the hell
out of the people sworn
to protect it.
They worry that this wonder
of the world
is being loved to death
in an era of
greed and boomtowns.
While some turn
history into cash,
other desperate
descendants of the Inca
take part in the biggest
and most devastating gold ruh
in modern times.
♪
And so we're off
[gentle flute music]
On a magical mystery tour
up and down the Inca trail
to savor what we can
while anyone can.
And we begin where
the Incas began
in the clean, thin air
of Lake Titicaca.
This massive lake
is over 12,000 feet high,
twice as high as Denver,
or roughly the altitude
most skydivers jump.
So the Incas
my goodness
they had to be
the kind of seamen
who could navigate
this gigantic body of water
and mountaineers
with lungs
like hot air balloons
to move around up here.
[groans]
Oh, I'm hurting.
On the island of the sun,
we find a maze of ruins
where holy men and women
would sip a very special
cactus juice.
This is a hallucinogen, righ?
- Exactly.
So that helps to open
the iris of your eyes.
- Ah.
- And the idea,
so it's to find, for example,
small corridors which once
were covered by
this kind of roofs.
- But also provide, like,
a psychedelic trip, huh?
- Exactly.
- Wow.
According to Jimena, my guid,
the brew would open their eys
in the dark labyrinth
and their minds
to visions of pumas
and eagles and snakes.
- So that was a special
thing of visions
to see different
mixtures of animals
and look at this
beautiful landscape.
- This is a vision
- Yes.
- That needs no psychedelic
cactus juice.
Look at this.
- Yes.
- Wow.
♪
- Do you see this niche here?
So I remember the first
time when I came here
and I standed there.
A local guide, so came
and he told me,
"Don't stand
there because that's
the portal of another
dimension."
When you stand there, so you
feel a very special peace.
- Really?
- Try it.
- Will Iwill I teleport into
some other time and space?
- Yes.
- Sadly, no.
But there are worse places
to enjoy twilight
than the Incan Garden of Ede.
For millions of Incan people,
this was the site
of their very creation.
The story goes that
the moon and the sun
came together and
hid in this rock
- To hid here, yes.
- During the great flood.
- Mm-hmm.
- And when it was over,
it flew away.
- Yes, that's right.
- Well, as luck
would have it, look!
There's the moon!
- Isn't it beautiful, yeah?
- The full moon
rising over Bolivia
just as the sun
- The sun.
- Sets over Peru.
I'm starting to
I might convert to Inca.
But their reverence
for celestial light
came with a certain brutalit.
This is the ceremonial
stone table
used to sacrifice
young women to the Gods.
And how would they do it?
- Well, they opened the chest.
They took it off, the heart,
and according how it was bumping
or maybe tasting, right?
So they could knew
how it's going to be,
the agricultural period
for the next season.
- Really? So the growth
of the crops depended on
- That's why they did it, yes.
- The beating heart
of this woman.
- Exactly.
- Wow.
Locals still use
this table each summer
to sacrifice goats or llamas,
while out in the water lives
another creature
being sacrificed,
another victim of human spral
and superstition.
[rock music]
♪
- Lake Titicaca, Bolivia,
and I am in search of an
elusive and endangered creatue
with a most unfortunate name.
- We're after
Telmatobius culeus
is the scientific
name of the frog.
- Jaime is a scientist with
the Bolivian Amphibian
Initiative.
- Telmatobius,
it's "life in water" and
Culeus means scrotum or sack.
- Ball sack.
- Yeah, ball sack.
- Yeah.
So it's the giant scrotum frog
of Lake Titicaca?
- Yeah, you can
call it like that.
- Okay.
Drawn by tales of
underwater Incan cities,
Jacques Cousteau dove here.
He didn't find any gold,
but he did find a kind of frg
that doesn't exist
anywhere else in the world.
The only frog that spends
its entire life underwater
thanks to loose skin
to absorb thin oxygen
at this high altitude.
When Jacques Cousteau
came here in the '70s
there was millions
of them, right?
- There was
- And they were the size
of canned hams.
- Yeah.
He described, like,
50 centimeter frog,
1 kilogram weight.
- Right, that's like
a 2-pound frog?
- Yeah,
it's like a 2-pound frog.
- Since then, at least 80%
have been wiped out.
A massive die-off in 2015
alarmed locals to
the reality that this lake
is becoming more
toxic by the day
as lakeside cities get bigger
and pollution flows stronger.
And then there is
the baseless belief
that these guys
are a natural Viagra
so they sell frog juice
in the markets of Lima.
- Here we have a big frog.
- Oh, look at that!
What's up, buddy?
See, how could you put
that face in a blender?
- Maybe we are some
of the last persons
that will see this frog,
because it's on the way
- But you're doing your best
to stop that from happening.
- We're trying.
- Jaime is trying
to sound the alarm
that the fate of this frog
is just one warning
that a new invasion
into the land of the Incas
is coming too hard, too fast.
Peru and Bolivia
are very poor countries,
and like so many corners
of our ever-crowded planet,
their lake in the sky
shows the struggle
for survival and balance.
And there is no better exampe
than the bizarre floating
islands of the Uros.
♪
"Welcome to Uros Khantati."
- Cristina.
- Hola!
- Hola.
[speaking Spanish]
- Thank you!
Hola. Mucho gusto.
- [speaking native language]
- What an amazing
island you have.
This is so cool!
It's like you live
on a big bouncy castle!
- You can jump, you can jump.
She says you can jump.
- I can jump.
I don't have to worry about
- If you jump too much,
you just go through.
- I'll go right through?
You don't have to
worry about spilling
Long before the Incas began
carving stone cities,
people known as the "Uros"
fled their enemies
by weaving entire islands
out of reeds and grass
and floating to safety
in the hidden corners
of Lake Titicaca.
And the good thing is if you get
in a fight with your neighbors
or your relatives,
you could just cut
the island in half, right?
And float different ways.
- [laughs]
- This is Cristina's hotel,
and it is deluxe.
There is solar power
to charge your phone,
indoor plumbing,
and if you don't like the vie,
she will turn the island.
Couple reasons why
she has a couple thousand
good reviews
on TripAdvisor.com.
Oh, my gosh.
- [speaking Spanish]
- Where's your girlfriend?
[laughter]
- Well,
I don't have a girlfriend.
I have a wife.
- Esposa.
- She would love this.
- [speaking Spanish]
[laughter]
- Some Uros think
Cristina is a sellout,
a cultural profiteer,
but her neighbor
and employee Raul
has agreed to take me back
to where they came from
and the contrast is shocking.
♪
- Mucho gusto.
Me llamo es Bill.
- Se llama Bill.
[speaking Spanish]
- Oh, look at this!
[both speaking Spanish]
- It's brand-new!
Our translator Bibiana learns
that these are wild birds
that live in the reeds.
The Uros raid their nests
and use body heat
to hatch the eggs.
Why do these people stay?
Why don't they move
closer to Puno
and have a better life like you?
- [speaking Spanish]
- So do they own this land?
- That'sthat's
- That's a complicated question.
- That's a complicated question.
- [speaking Spanish]
- Despite their
long history here,
they're considered squatters
in a Peruvian nature reserve.
At first the government
looked the other way
when a handful of tourist
islands popped up,
but now there are more than 7,
creating a new stress
on the fragile wetland.
But there is no denying
that Cristina's life
is so much better.
Thanks to visitors
from around the world,
she's put two children
through college
and even took a vacation
of her own
to Europe.
For her, tourism
is a gigantic blessing.
But when does it become
a curse?
[rock music]
♪
- Cusco, Peru,
at its height, it rivaled
the capitals of Europe
with 150,000 people.
Now the heart
of the Incan empire
is best known as
a point of departure
for the million-plus
who now descend
on Machu Picchu each year.
And it is literally a descent
from a city over
two miles high,
across cobblestones
700 years old,
down into the Sacred Valley,
down into the cloud forest.
There's no way
to drive to Machu Picchu.
One has to either
hike for days
or ride the rails.
In the '80s
there might have been
only scruffy backpackers
waiting for the whistle
with the locals.
Not anymore.
[indiscernible speech
over PA system]
This is so amazing, Bibiana!
- It is. It is.
I mean, I've been
coming to Cusco
and Machu Picchu
so many times,
but every time it just
I get the chills.
- Oh!
Bibiana is fiercely proud
of her Peruvian ancestry
and the magnetic allure
of the Incan history.
- I remember that
I was a little kid in Cusco,
and we had been taught
and always heard
in our lives, you know,
that the Spanish came
and took all the gold.
And the conquistadores
- Yeah.
- You know,
destroyed the empire.
And I was, like,
feeling this as if
this is ours, you know?
- Ah.
- This is our, our past,
our ancestors.
And it was like [gasps].
And I just wanted
to climb every single,
you know, building,
place in Machu Picchu.
- Yeah.
- Fascinated by it.
- As we roll through some of
the most fertile farmland
on the planet,
she breaks out a local snack
to prove just how fertile:
the giant corn
of the Sacred Valley.
The size of those kernels,
that's ridiculous!
They're like the size of grapes.
- They're delicious.
- And you don't use
steroids or witchcraft?
- No, no, no, no.
No, this, this kind of corn was
grown in Machu Picchu as well.
Soil is extremely
fertile there.
Now it has become
a center of tourism,
and unfortunately,
or fortunately for some,
people are selling
their agricultural land
for hotels.
- Hmm.
- So there are some agronomists
that are saying,
"Okay, what's gonna happen?
What are we gonna do?"
This is maize.
This is the corn.
- This is it, right here.
- Yes, this it it.
- But do you ever see a day,
say mid-century,
where politically
it makes sense
to build a big superhighway
to Machu Picchu?
- Oh, no.
- No?
- No, no, no.
- Why? 'Cause it's
physically impossible
or it would be too
much stress on the site?
- You really have
to control how many people
get to Machu Picchu.
- Yeah.
But as we arrive at the town
long known as Aguas Caliente,
I see why some believe
Peru has already lost control
of its most popular attractio.
It looks like
a rambling boomtown
built entirely
on improvisation,
sprawling into
every level square inch.
This was a tiny,
sleepy village
when a Yale man
named Hiram Bingham
wandered in a century back.
Like Indiana Jones, he was
part-time history professor,
part-time explorer
of modest acclaim
until the July day
he climbed this path
with a local farmer and cop
and a little boy
who promised to show him
"the old things."
Their hike is now replicated
by a fleet of buses
racing up and down
the mountain.
♪
The crowds are thickest at dan
so we intentionally arrive
just before closing
after many have cleared out.
[breathing heavily]
Oh, my gosh.
Oh, my gosh, look at this.
Oh!
[laughs]
Are you kidding?
[laughs]
Wow.
Oh, my God.
[gentle music]
♪
I cannot fathom
how many man-hours
it took at this altitude.
We're at the same height
most skiers in Colorado
hit the top of the chairlift.
And these folks 700,
800 years ago
built this
without an ounce
of mortar or plaster.
It takes the breath away
in a lot more ways than one.
Oh, look at this doorway.
- Buenas tardes.
- Buenas tardes.
Most archeologists believe
that all of this was built
as a spot of
ultimate relaxation
and religion for
the VIPs of the Inca world,
a place to escape
the crowded heat of Cusco,
relax among the clouds,
worship the sun and the star.
- [speaking Spanish]
- Fernando has been in charge
of this site for 20 years,
but he still gets giddy
over new discoveries.
- All of this was covered,
you know, by soil, by dirt.
All of this that you can see?
- I see. Yeah.
- It started down here
and all of this
was finally uncovered.
- His team recently unearthed
this celestial window
carved without chisels
to track the path of the sun
for planting and worship.
After a ten-minute climb,
I reach the spot I have seen
photographed so many times.
That high corner
where the last Inca ruler
must have stood
and smiled at the sun
and thought,
"It is good to be the king.
"Hmm.
"And maybe we should build
another addition
up there."
That's Huayna Picchu,
the young peak,
Machu Picchu, old peak.
And tomorrow morning
we're gonna try to climb that,
and I may die.
[rock music]
♪
[rock music]
♪
[upbeat music]
- [singing in Spanish]
- Around 3,000 people pile
into Machu Picchu each day
but only a few hundred
are allowed
to climb Huayna Picchu,
a collection
of terraces and temples
perched way on top
of that needle of granite.
Make it to the top?
- Yeah.
- How is it?
- Amazing.
- Yeah.
- What the hell.
How hard can it be?
[breathing heavily]
Oh, my God.
It's the Incan StairMaster.
[breathing heavily]
Como se llama?
- Rene.
- Rene?
- Yeah, you?
- Mucho gusto.
Bill.
- Bill?
[speaking Spanish]
- Mucho gusto.
[breathing heavily]
Rene, our porter,
reveals a
performance-enchancing secre,
a bag of coca leaves.
Too many?
- No. That's good.
- That's good?
And just
Sort of a Peruvian
homeopathic amphetamine.
I'll happily take
all the help I can get,
but as he bounds ahead,
mine doesn't seem to be
kicking in.
Oh, sweet baby Jesus.
[breathing heavily]
♪
- You guys are almost there.
Almost.
- That's what they all say.
- [laughs]
- [breathing heavily]
Wow.
Oh, my gosh.
This is ridiculous.
Ridiculously magnificent.
I mean, there was a guy,
a guy
600, 700 years ago
who was in charge
of laying those
bricks over there.
I can see why some want
to give credit to the aliens
for helping the Incas,
which is kind of racist,
by the way.
Because if the Romans
can do their thing,
why can't the
South Americans do theirs?
Look at this.
Look at this!
Up on this holy mountain,
9,000 feet above sea level,
I find an intricate system
of temples and terraces
hewn out of the granite.
They held gardens
and altars for sacrifice,
some of them connected
by tiny tunnels.
[breathing heavily]
Oh, man.
Muy pequeño.
[breathing heavily]
[grunting]
They said it couldn't be done.
Oh, my goodness.
♪
Archeologists look
at this place and think,
"Oh, my goodness."
"Let us stop time.
"Let us preserve every stone,
"study every ruin,
"learn as much as we can before
wear and tear takes its toll."
A developer looks
at this place and thinks,
"Ooh, I could put
the hotel there
"and the cable car there.
And all that money
could help the native people."
Where's the balance?
On Huayna Picchu,
there are few places
just to stand still,
and the trail is so narrow
the 500-person-a-day limit
makes sense,
but climbing back down
to Machu Picchu,
you got to wonder,
with no plumbing or sewage,
with these fragile ruins,
how many visitors
can it really handle?
So how do you imagine
this place 600 years ago?
- I think of this as being
like a resort of sorts, no?
- Okay.
- Of course
- Hundreds of people?
Thousands?
- Hundreds.
Hundreds of people.
I don't think that this is
for everybody to come.
- Man, if the Inca
could see it now
when hundreds arrive
before breakfast.
As an archeologist,
Louis Jaime
understands the draw.
So when the Peruvian
government asks you
"What's the optimal
number of tourists
we should allow
into Machu Picchu?"
What's your answer?
- As an archeologist
or a bureaucrat?
- First as an archeologist.
- Well, that's an easy answer,
no?
Zero.
- None?
- None.
- But as a bureaucrat,
as Peru's former
Deputy Minister of Culture,
Luis Jaime knows that
virtually all of Peru's tourim
depends on this one site.
When a landslide closed
Machu Picchu a few years bac,
tourism fell
by 90%.
Is there pressure,
financial pressure
to allow more people in?
- [speaking Spanish]
- Two million.
He says there
will be tighter control
on pedestrian flow
and limits on the size
of tour groups,
but two million would mean
twice as many visitors as no.
So do you think the people
that are crowding in here today
are getting
that Inca experience?
What the king enjoyed?
- I don't think so.
Well, maybe 45 years ago
when I came for the first time
and there were only 500
peoples per day on a big day,
you got that impression
that the site was yours.
It was quiet.
It was, I mean, incredible.
There were orchids every
all around
and hummingbirds.
Now I'm not sure that people
are getting that experience,
and in the future,
if things keep on going
the way they have been going,
certainly it will not
be that experience, no.
- But Luis has promised
to show me a few places
where that experience
still exists,
uncrowded gems
that could delight visitors
and release the pressure
on precious Machu Picchu.
[rock music]
♪
- His name was Pachacuti,
the earth shaker,
and he built an empire
unlike any other.
Many know about Cusco,
his sprawling capital,
everybody knows
about Machu Picchu,
but a relative few take
the time to visit
a place like this.
Písac,
a breathtaking city
of massive terraces
and delicate temples
perched above
the Sacred Valley.
Given its strategic placement,
high priests,
farmers, and soldiers
probably shared this spot
with eyes both on the heavens
and the ground below.
Oh, wow.
You weren't kidding.
It's like the biggest
amphitheater I've ever seen.
- Look at how beautiful the
waving, do you
see the
- Right, right.
- They are not fighting natur,
you see?
They are simply trying to
make it a little bit
more organized.
- Sweeten it.
- Sweeten it, that's the wor.
- While the terraces
at Machu Picchu
were largely for looks,
these held sophisticated farm,
different crops
at different altitudes,
including hundreds
of varieties of potatoes.
Now, this is a penthouse.
This is magnificent.
Look at the stonework here.
- This is some of the finest
stonework in all the empire.
You only find this quality
of stonework in Cusco.
- It goes in like a cork.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- But here in the monument,
we have some double-sided rocks.
And that isI mean,
that is difficult, no?
Because then you have
one single piece of rock
that has two sides
- It has to be perfectly square.
- Exactly, no?
So, I mean,
that the ultimate thing, no?
And nothing compares
to this, huh?
- These intricate plumbing
systems
all gravity-fed,
all carved into the rock.
Fountains feeding into pools,
feeding into baths,
feeding into gutter systems.
This is water
that's been running
for 600, 700 years.
Who knows?
If Hiram Bingham had
"discovered"
this place instead,
if he had pimped Písac
as the lost city in the clous
on the pages of
"National Geographic,"
maybe this place would be
crawling with tourists.
Or if he'd found this ruin
on the outskirts of Cusco,
the circle that once held
a five-story temple of the sn
with a ceiling lined in gold
and etched with
the constellations.
- There's a theory, no,
but it's more than a theory,
Cusco seems to have been
shaped as a puma.
And if the town of Cusco
was the body of the puma,
you know, this was
the head of the puma.
- Ah.
The lightning bolt zigzag
at the top of the puma's head
are a puzzle of boulders
the size of minivans
with seams tight enough
to reject a credit card.
As someone who has
devoted his life
to protecting
the culture of Peru,
what worries you the most?
Is it too many tourists?
Is it development?
What keeps you awake at night
when you think
about places like this?
- [speaking Spanish]
- Ricardo is the Director
of Culture in Cusco.
He'd love to create world-clas
visitor center here
and others around the country
to take the pressure off
of Machu Picchu,
but Peruvian bureaucracy has
paralyzed the entire process.
They simply have too many
precious archeological sites
and too little management.
For centuries
this town was known
as "Aguas Calientes,"
hot springs,
but in a purely commercial moe
they just changed
the name to Machupicchu.
But whatever you call it,
the crush of visitors
is overwhelming
their crude infrastructure,
and the hasty urban planning
means that they
are just one mudslide away
from catastrophe.
- [speaking Spanish]
- The young mayor
says there is a plan
to contain
the explosive growth,
but there are no signs
of it stopping.
- This is probably one
of the most expensive
real estate in Peru.
- This was supposed
to be a public square,
but it is now overrun with
squatters selling
cheap trinkets.
The Peruvian government seems
powerless to control them,
and Luis worries
that an illegal land grab
will overwhelm
their most precious sites.
- It used to be in Peru
that the worst enemy we had,
in terms of cultural heritage,
were poachers and looters,
you know,
digging for gold
and mummies
and, you know, and pots.
But nowadays our worst problem
is actually people encroaching
to land,
taking it over,
and selling it.
And the land traffickers are now
feeding out of
the only spots around us
that are not taken,
and those are
the archeological sites.
- But for many folks
from poor regions,
squatting a trinket stand
and cashing in on history
beats the hell
out of growing corn
or raising llamas.
And it could be worse,
it could be this.
Next stop, the Amazon,
where boomtowns brimming with
bars and brothels and badasss
are part of the biggest illegl
gold rush of modern times.
Where the curse of Incan gold
and human greed
rolls on.
[rock music]
♪
[rock music]
♪
- [singing in foreign language]
♪
- When a Spaniard named Pizaro
used cannons
to conquer an Incan city,
the king offered the
conquistador a ransom of gol,
750 tons of gold.
Though that king was executed
before the ransom arrived,
that lust for gold
turned an entire civilization
into statues and memories.
And that gold lust
never went away.
Today it is turning
huge swaths of the Amazon
into utter wasteland.
As the lungs of the planet,
this rainforest
not only captures our carbon
and gives us oxygen to breath,
but it also holds a tenth
of the world's wildlife.
The Madre de Dios region,
"mother of God,"
holds one of
the most precious pockets
renowned for housing
a stunning menagerie
of macaws and monkeys
jaguars and butterflies.
The battle to save it
from farmers with chainsaws
is nothing new,
but the fight against miners
with chainsaws is,
as illegal gold
has replaced cocaine
as Peru's most valuable expor.
So this is like
the Deadwood of the Amazon?
- This is the Deadwood
of the Amazon, yeah.
- A frontier, wild west,
lawless mining town.
- That's a girlie bar,
prostie bar.
- A prostie bar.
Through a Carnegie-endowed
program out of Stanford,
Luis and Francisco study
the devastating effects
of illegal mining on every
form of life in the Amazon.
- This is the river,
what it looks like.
- Oh, my God.
- Look at this side.
- Café con leche.
- Mm-hmm.
- Do you see now
the dead trees?
Everything goes directly
into these rivers
that are now ponded.
They're starting to drown
the trees around here
because the water's
accumulating.
All the trash is dumped here.
Lots of vultures here.
They're a part of the
clean-up crew, I guess.
- This place has become
hostile
to gringos with cameras,
but Francisco knows some guys
in one of the many
blue tarp shantytowns
that rim the forest.
- Hola.
- [mumbling]
- Mucho gusto.
Their illicit two-wheel
taxi service
is known as "los tigres."
My driver, one of
the thousands of young men
who have come
from all over Peru
lured by an operation
that could net $100 a day
or get them killed.
We ride for 20 minutes
before the lush green
begins to thin.
The jungle floor turns to san.
A half mile further,
and the rainforest is gone.
It's like we've entered a
completely different ecosystem.
From jungle to desert
in a matter of feet.
- Oh, this didn't exist.
These lakes didn't exist.
Nothing did.
It was just flat forest
like we went through.
This is all man-made.
- Wow. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
And these are all toxic
toxic pools now?
- This is all mining pits
that are filled in
after it's been abandoned
with rainwater.
- They use an old,
brutal method,
merciless on the land,
cutting down trees,
blasting riverbanks with
diesel-powered fire hoses
creating a slurry
that gets sifted until
eureka, a tiny flake of gold.
Since this land only holds
2 grams of precious metal
per ton of mud,
mercury is needed
to pull the gold
from the sludge.
And what effect
does that mercury have
on the living things here,
including the people?
- Well, it's magic
for the mining process,
but it's poison
for everything else.
- So it's not just the guys
who are working with the stuff
who are exposed
to this dangerous stuff.
- That's right.
- It could end up
in the fish market.
- It does end up
in the fish market
because most of these people
are subsistence fishers.
- After decades of ambivalenc,
the national government
finally started cracking dow,
raiding illegal mines
from the jungles to the Ande,
rounding up the usual suspecs
and blowing up their equipmen.
All under the command
of this guy,
Antonio Fernandez Jeri.
Are the raids working?
Because we've heard
reports from some
that say after your men leave
and the helicopters fly away,
the miners go back to business.
- [speaking Spanish]
- So you think it'll take
a generation to stop this?
- That's 620 square miles
of Amazon
turned to toxic sand,
and according to these guys,
that estimate of a comeback
is way too generous.
How long will it take
for this to come back?
- Well, that's a very
difficult question,
but maybe hundreds of years.
- It just struck me,
driving through this jungle,
that 600 years ago
the conquistadors came
and took Peruvian
gold by force.
Now it's a market in London
that changes the price
and motivates guys
who have no better options
to do this.
- What happens here
is directly connected
to that little price ticker.
And that high price can spur
a rush of people to go
into a national forest
and take apart
a rainforest next week.
[somber flute music]
♪
- And so what is the fix?
I mean, if you were given
a superpower, you know,
to address this,
where would you start?
- Well, I think what's
what's key is to set up
an effective
certification system
that connects
the consumer with the gold.
- Much the way consumers turn
their backs on blood diamond,
Luis dreams of a day
when we'll all demand
green, fair-trade gold.
But how many lives,
how much forest will be wreckd
before we ever see
such a change?
The Incas may be long gone,
Peru and Bolivia
may seem so far away,
but this journey
was one big reminder
of how we are all connected
from the Uros
on their floating islands
to the archeologists
in their fragile cloud cities
to the gold miners
scrambling to fill
an insatiable demand.
And this journey
was one big reminder
that the most powerful
force in history
is human nature.
And our little choices
add up to big changes
for better
or worse.
- [breathing heavily]
How the hell did
they pull this off?
[groans]
How did people
without steel
or wheels
or a written language
build a stairway to heaven
And a pleasure palace
for the ages?
Are you kidding?
Machu Picchu:
just one reason the Incas
must have been so proud,
so secure in their
impossible empire
from the Andes to the Amazon..
until the outsiders came,
carrying swords and germs,
to take their gold
and end their reign.
- [whistling]
- And the last Incas
could never have imagined
how the outsiders
would just keep coming
and how the curse
of Inca gold
would never end.
Oh, wow.
Oh, my goodness.
My name is Bill Weir,
and I'm a storyteller.
I've reported
from all over the world,
and I have seen so much chang.
[upbeat rock music]
So I made a list
of the most wonderful places
to explore
right before they change
forever.
♪
This is "The Wonder List."
We think we are so smart
with our towers
and our highways,
but how great
would our cities be
if we had to build them
without tools?
Could we stack rocks
the size of houses
using only wit and muscle,
build cities atop mountains
using only sweat and the star?
Well, the ancient
South Americans could,
and long before Columbus
set sail,
they built an empire
as big as two Californias.
They mined silver
and gold by the tons,
laid enough good roads
to circle the earth,
but then, in a relative blin,
they were gone.
And now a lost
civilization lives on
mainly in the bucket lists
of countless modern wanderer.
Yes, if you hope to keep up
with the Indiana Joneses,
Machu Picchu is on your list.
It is the most popular ruin
in South America,
and that scares the hell
out of the people sworn
to protect it.
They worry that this wonder
of the world
is being loved to death
in an era of
greed and boomtowns.
While some turn
history into cash,
other desperate
descendants of the Inca
take part in the biggest
and most devastating gold ruh
in modern times.
♪
And so we're off
[gentle flute music]
On a magical mystery tour
up and down the Inca trail
to savor what we can
while anyone can.
And we begin where
the Incas began
in the clean, thin air
of Lake Titicaca.
This massive lake
is over 12,000 feet high,
twice as high as Denver,
or roughly the altitude
most skydivers jump.
So the Incas
my goodness
they had to be
the kind of seamen
who could navigate
this gigantic body of water
and mountaineers
with lungs
like hot air balloons
to move around up here.
[groans]
Oh, I'm hurting.
On the island of the sun,
we find a maze of ruins
where holy men and women
would sip a very special
cactus juice.
This is a hallucinogen, righ?
- Exactly.
So that helps to open
the iris of your eyes.
- Ah.
- And the idea,
so it's to find, for example,
small corridors which once
were covered by
this kind of roofs.
- But also provide, like,
a psychedelic trip, huh?
- Exactly.
- Wow.
According to Jimena, my guid,
the brew would open their eys
in the dark labyrinth
and their minds
to visions of pumas
and eagles and snakes.
- So that was a special
thing of visions
to see different
mixtures of animals
and look at this
beautiful landscape.
- This is a vision
- Yes.
- That needs no psychedelic
cactus juice.
Look at this.
- Yes.
- Wow.
♪
- Do you see this niche here?
So I remember the first
time when I came here
and I standed there.
A local guide, so came
and he told me,
"Don't stand
there because that's
the portal of another
dimension."
When you stand there, so you
feel a very special peace.
- Really?
- Try it.
- Will Iwill I teleport into
some other time and space?
- Yes.
- Sadly, no.
But there are worse places
to enjoy twilight
than the Incan Garden of Ede.
For millions of Incan people,
this was the site
of their very creation.
The story goes that
the moon and the sun
came together and
hid in this rock
- To hid here, yes.
- During the great flood.
- Mm-hmm.
- And when it was over,
it flew away.
- Yes, that's right.
- Well, as luck
would have it, look!
There's the moon!
- Isn't it beautiful, yeah?
- The full moon
rising over Bolivia
just as the sun
- The sun.
- Sets over Peru.
I'm starting to
I might convert to Inca.
But their reverence
for celestial light
came with a certain brutalit.
This is the ceremonial
stone table
used to sacrifice
young women to the Gods.
And how would they do it?
- Well, they opened the chest.
They took it off, the heart,
and according how it was bumping
or maybe tasting, right?
So they could knew
how it's going to be,
the agricultural period
for the next season.
- Really? So the growth
of the crops depended on
- That's why they did it, yes.
- The beating heart
of this woman.
- Exactly.
- Wow.
Locals still use
this table each summer
to sacrifice goats or llamas,
while out in the water lives
another creature
being sacrificed,
another victim of human spral
and superstition.
[rock music]
♪
- Lake Titicaca, Bolivia,
and I am in search of an
elusive and endangered creatue
with a most unfortunate name.
- We're after
Telmatobius culeus
is the scientific
name of the frog.
- Jaime is a scientist with
the Bolivian Amphibian
Initiative.
- Telmatobius,
it's "life in water" and
Culeus means scrotum or sack.
- Ball sack.
- Yeah, ball sack.
- Yeah.
So it's the giant scrotum frog
of Lake Titicaca?
- Yeah, you can
call it like that.
- Okay.
Drawn by tales of
underwater Incan cities,
Jacques Cousteau dove here.
He didn't find any gold,
but he did find a kind of frg
that doesn't exist
anywhere else in the world.
The only frog that spends
its entire life underwater
thanks to loose skin
to absorb thin oxygen
at this high altitude.
When Jacques Cousteau
came here in the '70s
there was millions
of them, right?
- There was
- And they were the size
of canned hams.
- Yeah.
He described, like,
50 centimeter frog,
1 kilogram weight.
- Right, that's like
a 2-pound frog?
- Yeah,
it's like a 2-pound frog.
- Since then, at least 80%
have been wiped out.
A massive die-off in 2015
alarmed locals to
the reality that this lake
is becoming more
toxic by the day
as lakeside cities get bigger
and pollution flows stronger.
And then there is
the baseless belief
that these guys
are a natural Viagra
so they sell frog juice
in the markets of Lima.
- Here we have a big frog.
- Oh, look at that!
What's up, buddy?
See, how could you put
that face in a blender?
- Maybe we are some
of the last persons
that will see this frog,
because it's on the way
- But you're doing your best
to stop that from happening.
- We're trying.
- Jaime is trying
to sound the alarm
that the fate of this frog
is just one warning
that a new invasion
into the land of the Incas
is coming too hard, too fast.
Peru and Bolivia
are very poor countries,
and like so many corners
of our ever-crowded planet,
their lake in the sky
shows the struggle
for survival and balance.
And there is no better exampe
than the bizarre floating
islands of the Uros.
♪
"Welcome to Uros Khantati."
- Cristina.
- Hola!
- Hola.
[speaking Spanish]
- Thank you!
Hola. Mucho gusto.
- [speaking native language]
- What an amazing
island you have.
This is so cool!
It's like you live
on a big bouncy castle!
- You can jump, you can jump.
She says you can jump.
- I can jump.
I don't have to worry about
- If you jump too much,
you just go through.
- I'll go right through?
You don't have to
worry about spilling
Long before the Incas began
carving stone cities,
people known as the "Uros"
fled their enemies
by weaving entire islands
out of reeds and grass
and floating to safety
in the hidden corners
of Lake Titicaca.
And the good thing is if you get
in a fight with your neighbors
or your relatives,
you could just cut
the island in half, right?
And float different ways.
- [laughs]
- This is Cristina's hotel,
and it is deluxe.
There is solar power
to charge your phone,
indoor plumbing,
and if you don't like the vie,
she will turn the island.
Couple reasons why
she has a couple thousand
good reviews
on TripAdvisor.com.
Oh, my gosh.
- [speaking Spanish]
- Where's your girlfriend?
[laughter]
- Well,
I don't have a girlfriend.
I have a wife.
- Esposa.
- She would love this.
- [speaking Spanish]
[laughter]
- Some Uros think
Cristina is a sellout,
a cultural profiteer,
but her neighbor
and employee Raul
has agreed to take me back
to where they came from
and the contrast is shocking.
♪
- Mucho gusto.
Me llamo es Bill.
- Se llama Bill.
[speaking Spanish]
- Oh, look at this!
[both speaking Spanish]
- It's brand-new!
Our translator Bibiana learns
that these are wild birds
that live in the reeds.
The Uros raid their nests
and use body heat
to hatch the eggs.
Why do these people stay?
Why don't they move
closer to Puno
and have a better life like you?
- [speaking Spanish]
- So do they own this land?
- That'sthat's
- That's a complicated question.
- That's a complicated question.
- [speaking Spanish]
- Despite their
long history here,
they're considered squatters
in a Peruvian nature reserve.
At first the government
looked the other way
when a handful of tourist
islands popped up,
but now there are more than 7,
creating a new stress
on the fragile wetland.
But there is no denying
that Cristina's life
is so much better.
Thanks to visitors
from around the world,
she's put two children
through college
and even took a vacation
of her own
to Europe.
For her, tourism
is a gigantic blessing.
But when does it become
a curse?
[rock music]
♪
- Cusco, Peru,
at its height, it rivaled
the capitals of Europe
with 150,000 people.
Now the heart
of the Incan empire
is best known as
a point of departure
for the million-plus
who now descend
on Machu Picchu each year.
And it is literally a descent
from a city over
two miles high,
across cobblestones
700 years old,
down into the Sacred Valley,
down into the cloud forest.
There's no way
to drive to Machu Picchu.
One has to either
hike for days
or ride the rails.
In the '80s
there might have been
only scruffy backpackers
waiting for the whistle
with the locals.
Not anymore.
[indiscernible speech
over PA system]
This is so amazing, Bibiana!
- It is. It is.
I mean, I've been
coming to Cusco
and Machu Picchu
so many times,
but every time it just
I get the chills.
- Oh!
Bibiana is fiercely proud
of her Peruvian ancestry
and the magnetic allure
of the Incan history.
- I remember that
I was a little kid in Cusco,
and we had been taught
and always heard
in our lives, you know,
that the Spanish came
and took all the gold.
And the conquistadores
- Yeah.
- You know,
destroyed the empire.
And I was, like,
feeling this as if
this is ours, you know?
- Ah.
- This is our, our past,
our ancestors.
And it was like [gasps].
And I just wanted
to climb every single,
you know, building,
place in Machu Picchu.
- Yeah.
- Fascinated by it.
- As we roll through some of
the most fertile farmland
on the planet,
she breaks out a local snack
to prove just how fertile:
the giant corn
of the Sacred Valley.
The size of those kernels,
that's ridiculous!
They're like the size of grapes.
- They're delicious.
- And you don't use
steroids or witchcraft?
- No, no, no, no.
No, this, this kind of corn was
grown in Machu Picchu as well.
Soil is extremely
fertile there.
Now it has become
a center of tourism,
and unfortunately,
or fortunately for some,
people are selling
their agricultural land
for hotels.
- Hmm.
- So there are some agronomists
that are saying,
"Okay, what's gonna happen?
What are we gonna do?"
This is maize.
This is the corn.
- This is it, right here.
- Yes, this it it.
- But do you ever see a day,
say mid-century,
where politically
it makes sense
to build a big superhighway
to Machu Picchu?
- Oh, no.
- No?
- No, no, no.
- Why? 'Cause it's
physically impossible
or it would be too
much stress on the site?
- You really have
to control how many people
get to Machu Picchu.
- Yeah.
But as we arrive at the town
long known as Aguas Caliente,
I see why some believe
Peru has already lost control
of its most popular attractio.
It looks like
a rambling boomtown
built entirely
on improvisation,
sprawling into
every level square inch.
This was a tiny,
sleepy village
when a Yale man
named Hiram Bingham
wandered in a century back.
Like Indiana Jones, he was
part-time history professor,
part-time explorer
of modest acclaim
until the July day
he climbed this path
with a local farmer and cop
and a little boy
who promised to show him
"the old things."
Their hike is now replicated
by a fleet of buses
racing up and down
the mountain.
♪
The crowds are thickest at dan
so we intentionally arrive
just before closing
after many have cleared out.
[breathing heavily]
Oh, my gosh.
Oh, my gosh, look at this.
Oh!
[laughs]
Are you kidding?
[laughs]
Wow.
Oh, my God.
[gentle music]
♪
I cannot fathom
how many man-hours
it took at this altitude.
We're at the same height
most skiers in Colorado
hit the top of the chairlift.
And these folks 700,
800 years ago
built this
without an ounce
of mortar or plaster.
It takes the breath away
in a lot more ways than one.
Oh, look at this doorway.
- Buenas tardes.
- Buenas tardes.
Most archeologists believe
that all of this was built
as a spot of
ultimate relaxation
and religion for
the VIPs of the Inca world,
a place to escape
the crowded heat of Cusco,
relax among the clouds,
worship the sun and the star.
- [speaking Spanish]
- Fernando has been in charge
of this site for 20 years,
but he still gets giddy
over new discoveries.
- All of this was covered,
you know, by soil, by dirt.
All of this that you can see?
- I see. Yeah.
- It started down here
and all of this
was finally uncovered.
- His team recently unearthed
this celestial window
carved without chisels
to track the path of the sun
for planting and worship.
After a ten-minute climb,
I reach the spot I have seen
photographed so many times.
That high corner
where the last Inca ruler
must have stood
and smiled at the sun
and thought,
"It is good to be the king.
"Hmm.
"And maybe we should build
another addition
up there."
That's Huayna Picchu,
the young peak,
Machu Picchu, old peak.
And tomorrow morning
we're gonna try to climb that,
and I may die.
[rock music]
♪
[rock music]
♪
[upbeat music]
- [singing in Spanish]
- Around 3,000 people pile
into Machu Picchu each day
but only a few hundred
are allowed
to climb Huayna Picchu,
a collection
of terraces and temples
perched way on top
of that needle of granite.
Make it to the top?
- Yeah.
- How is it?
- Amazing.
- Yeah.
- What the hell.
How hard can it be?
[breathing heavily]
Oh, my God.
It's the Incan StairMaster.
[breathing heavily]
Como se llama?
- Rene.
- Rene?
- Yeah, you?
- Mucho gusto.
Bill.
- Bill?
[speaking Spanish]
- Mucho gusto.
[breathing heavily]
Rene, our porter,
reveals a
performance-enchancing secre,
a bag of coca leaves.
Too many?
- No. That's good.
- That's good?
And just
Sort of a Peruvian
homeopathic amphetamine.
I'll happily take
all the help I can get,
but as he bounds ahead,
mine doesn't seem to be
kicking in.
Oh, sweet baby Jesus.
[breathing heavily]
♪
- You guys are almost there.
Almost.
- That's what they all say.
- [laughs]
- [breathing heavily]
Wow.
Oh, my gosh.
This is ridiculous.
Ridiculously magnificent.
I mean, there was a guy,
a guy
600, 700 years ago
who was in charge
of laying those
bricks over there.
I can see why some want
to give credit to the aliens
for helping the Incas,
which is kind of racist,
by the way.
Because if the Romans
can do their thing,
why can't the
South Americans do theirs?
Look at this.
Look at this!
Up on this holy mountain,
9,000 feet above sea level,
I find an intricate system
of temples and terraces
hewn out of the granite.
They held gardens
and altars for sacrifice,
some of them connected
by tiny tunnels.
[breathing heavily]
Oh, man.
Muy pequeño.
[breathing heavily]
[grunting]
They said it couldn't be done.
Oh, my goodness.
♪
Archeologists look
at this place and think,
"Oh, my goodness."
"Let us stop time.
"Let us preserve every stone,
"study every ruin,
"learn as much as we can before
wear and tear takes its toll."
A developer looks
at this place and thinks,
"Ooh, I could put
the hotel there
"and the cable car there.
And all that money
could help the native people."
Where's the balance?
On Huayna Picchu,
there are few places
just to stand still,
and the trail is so narrow
the 500-person-a-day limit
makes sense,
but climbing back down
to Machu Picchu,
you got to wonder,
with no plumbing or sewage,
with these fragile ruins,
how many visitors
can it really handle?
So how do you imagine
this place 600 years ago?
- I think of this as being
like a resort of sorts, no?
- Okay.
- Of course
- Hundreds of people?
Thousands?
- Hundreds.
Hundreds of people.
I don't think that this is
for everybody to come.
- Man, if the Inca
could see it now
when hundreds arrive
before breakfast.
As an archeologist,
Louis Jaime
understands the draw.
So when the Peruvian
government asks you
"What's the optimal
number of tourists
we should allow
into Machu Picchu?"
What's your answer?
- As an archeologist
or a bureaucrat?
- First as an archeologist.
- Well, that's an easy answer,
no?
Zero.
- None?
- None.
- But as a bureaucrat,
as Peru's former
Deputy Minister of Culture,
Luis Jaime knows that
virtually all of Peru's tourim
depends on this one site.
When a landslide closed
Machu Picchu a few years bac,
tourism fell
by 90%.
Is there pressure,
financial pressure
to allow more people in?
- [speaking Spanish]
- Two million.
He says there
will be tighter control
on pedestrian flow
and limits on the size
of tour groups,
but two million would mean
twice as many visitors as no.
So do you think the people
that are crowding in here today
are getting
that Inca experience?
What the king enjoyed?
- I don't think so.
Well, maybe 45 years ago
when I came for the first time
and there were only 500
peoples per day on a big day,
you got that impression
that the site was yours.
It was quiet.
It was, I mean, incredible.
There were orchids every
all around
and hummingbirds.
Now I'm not sure that people
are getting that experience,
and in the future,
if things keep on going
the way they have been going,
certainly it will not
be that experience, no.
- But Luis has promised
to show me a few places
where that experience
still exists,
uncrowded gems
that could delight visitors
and release the pressure
on precious Machu Picchu.
[rock music]
♪
- His name was Pachacuti,
the earth shaker,
and he built an empire
unlike any other.
Many know about Cusco,
his sprawling capital,
everybody knows
about Machu Picchu,
but a relative few take
the time to visit
a place like this.
Písac,
a breathtaking city
of massive terraces
and delicate temples
perched above
the Sacred Valley.
Given its strategic placement,
high priests,
farmers, and soldiers
probably shared this spot
with eyes both on the heavens
and the ground below.
Oh, wow.
You weren't kidding.
It's like the biggest
amphitheater I've ever seen.
- Look at how beautiful the
waving, do you
see the
- Right, right.
- They are not fighting natur,
you see?
They are simply trying to
make it a little bit
more organized.
- Sweeten it.
- Sweeten it, that's the wor.
- While the terraces
at Machu Picchu
were largely for looks,
these held sophisticated farm,
different crops
at different altitudes,
including hundreds
of varieties of potatoes.
Now, this is a penthouse.
This is magnificent.
Look at the stonework here.
- This is some of the finest
stonework in all the empire.
You only find this quality
of stonework in Cusco.
- It goes in like a cork.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- But here in the monument,
we have some double-sided rocks.
And that isI mean,
that is difficult, no?
Because then you have
one single piece of rock
that has two sides
- It has to be perfectly square.
- Exactly, no?
So, I mean,
that the ultimate thing, no?
And nothing compares
to this, huh?
- These intricate plumbing
systems
all gravity-fed,
all carved into the rock.
Fountains feeding into pools,
feeding into baths,
feeding into gutter systems.
This is water
that's been running
for 600, 700 years.
Who knows?
If Hiram Bingham had
"discovered"
this place instead,
if he had pimped Písac
as the lost city in the clous
on the pages of
"National Geographic,"
maybe this place would be
crawling with tourists.
Or if he'd found this ruin
on the outskirts of Cusco,
the circle that once held
a five-story temple of the sn
with a ceiling lined in gold
and etched with
the constellations.
- There's a theory, no,
but it's more than a theory,
Cusco seems to have been
shaped as a puma.
And if the town of Cusco
was the body of the puma,
you know, this was
the head of the puma.
- Ah.
The lightning bolt zigzag
at the top of the puma's head
are a puzzle of boulders
the size of minivans
with seams tight enough
to reject a credit card.
As someone who has
devoted his life
to protecting
the culture of Peru,
what worries you the most?
Is it too many tourists?
Is it development?
What keeps you awake at night
when you think
about places like this?
- [speaking Spanish]
- Ricardo is the Director
of Culture in Cusco.
He'd love to create world-clas
visitor center here
and others around the country
to take the pressure off
of Machu Picchu,
but Peruvian bureaucracy has
paralyzed the entire process.
They simply have too many
precious archeological sites
and too little management.
For centuries
this town was known
as "Aguas Calientes,"
hot springs,
but in a purely commercial moe
they just changed
the name to Machupicchu.
But whatever you call it,
the crush of visitors
is overwhelming
their crude infrastructure,
and the hasty urban planning
means that they
are just one mudslide away
from catastrophe.
- [speaking Spanish]
- The young mayor
says there is a plan
to contain
the explosive growth,
but there are no signs
of it stopping.
- This is probably one
of the most expensive
real estate in Peru.
- This was supposed
to be a public square,
but it is now overrun with
squatters selling
cheap trinkets.
The Peruvian government seems
powerless to control them,
and Luis worries
that an illegal land grab
will overwhelm
their most precious sites.
- It used to be in Peru
that the worst enemy we had,
in terms of cultural heritage,
were poachers and looters,
you know,
digging for gold
and mummies
and, you know, and pots.
But nowadays our worst problem
is actually people encroaching
to land,
taking it over,
and selling it.
And the land traffickers are now
feeding out of
the only spots around us
that are not taken,
and those are
the archeological sites.
- But for many folks
from poor regions,
squatting a trinket stand
and cashing in on history
beats the hell
out of growing corn
or raising llamas.
And it could be worse,
it could be this.
Next stop, the Amazon,
where boomtowns brimming with
bars and brothels and badasss
are part of the biggest illegl
gold rush of modern times.
Where the curse of Incan gold
and human greed
rolls on.
[rock music]
♪
[rock music]
♪
- [singing in foreign language]
♪
- When a Spaniard named Pizaro
used cannons
to conquer an Incan city,
the king offered the
conquistador a ransom of gol,
750 tons of gold.
Though that king was executed
before the ransom arrived,
that lust for gold
turned an entire civilization
into statues and memories.
And that gold lust
never went away.
Today it is turning
huge swaths of the Amazon
into utter wasteland.
As the lungs of the planet,
this rainforest
not only captures our carbon
and gives us oxygen to breath,
but it also holds a tenth
of the world's wildlife.
The Madre de Dios region,
"mother of God,"
holds one of
the most precious pockets
renowned for housing
a stunning menagerie
of macaws and monkeys
jaguars and butterflies.
The battle to save it
from farmers with chainsaws
is nothing new,
but the fight against miners
with chainsaws is,
as illegal gold
has replaced cocaine
as Peru's most valuable expor.
So this is like
the Deadwood of the Amazon?
- This is the Deadwood
of the Amazon, yeah.
- A frontier, wild west,
lawless mining town.
- That's a girlie bar,
prostie bar.
- A prostie bar.
Through a Carnegie-endowed
program out of Stanford,
Luis and Francisco study
the devastating effects
of illegal mining on every
form of life in the Amazon.
- This is the river,
what it looks like.
- Oh, my God.
- Look at this side.
- Café con leche.
- Mm-hmm.
- Do you see now
the dead trees?
Everything goes directly
into these rivers
that are now ponded.
They're starting to drown
the trees around here
because the water's
accumulating.
All the trash is dumped here.
Lots of vultures here.
They're a part of the
clean-up crew, I guess.
- This place has become
hostile
to gringos with cameras,
but Francisco knows some guys
in one of the many
blue tarp shantytowns
that rim the forest.
- Hola.
- [mumbling]
- Mucho gusto.
Their illicit two-wheel
taxi service
is known as "los tigres."
My driver, one of
the thousands of young men
who have come
from all over Peru
lured by an operation
that could net $100 a day
or get them killed.
We ride for 20 minutes
before the lush green
begins to thin.
The jungle floor turns to san.
A half mile further,
and the rainforest is gone.
It's like we've entered a
completely different ecosystem.
From jungle to desert
in a matter of feet.
- Oh, this didn't exist.
These lakes didn't exist.
Nothing did.
It was just flat forest
like we went through.
This is all man-made.
- Wow. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
And these are all toxic
toxic pools now?
- This is all mining pits
that are filled in
after it's been abandoned
with rainwater.
- They use an old,
brutal method,
merciless on the land,
cutting down trees,
blasting riverbanks with
diesel-powered fire hoses
creating a slurry
that gets sifted until
eureka, a tiny flake of gold.
Since this land only holds
2 grams of precious metal
per ton of mud,
mercury is needed
to pull the gold
from the sludge.
And what effect
does that mercury have
on the living things here,
including the people?
- Well, it's magic
for the mining process,
but it's poison
for everything else.
- So it's not just the guys
who are working with the stuff
who are exposed
to this dangerous stuff.
- That's right.
- It could end up
in the fish market.
- It does end up
in the fish market
because most of these people
are subsistence fishers.
- After decades of ambivalenc,
the national government
finally started cracking dow,
raiding illegal mines
from the jungles to the Ande,
rounding up the usual suspecs
and blowing up their equipmen.
All under the command
of this guy,
Antonio Fernandez Jeri.
Are the raids working?
Because we've heard
reports from some
that say after your men leave
and the helicopters fly away,
the miners go back to business.
- [speaking Spanish]
- So you think it'll take
a generation to stop this?
- That's 620 square miles
of Amazon
turned to toxic sand,
and according to these guys,
that estimate of a comeback
is way too generous.
How long will it take
for this to come back?
- Well, that's a very
difficult question,
but maybe hundreds of years.
- It just struck me,
driving through this jungle,
that 600 years ago
the conquistadors came
and took Peruvian
gold by force.
Now it's a market in London
that changes the price
and motivates guys
who have no better options
to do this.
- What happens here
is directly connected
to that little price ticker.
And that high price can spur
a rush of people to go
into a national forest
and take apart
a rainforest next week.
[somber flute music]
♪
- And so what is the fix?
I mean, if you were given
a superpower, you know,
to address this,
where would you start?
- Well, I think what's
what's key is to set up
an effective
certification system
that connects
the consumer with the gold.
- Much the way consumers turn
their backs on blood diamond,
Luis dreams of a day
when we'll all demand
green, fair-trade gold.
But how many lives,
how much forest will be wreckd
before we ever see
such a change?
The Incas may be long gone,
Peru and Bolivia
may seem so far away,
but this journey
was one big reminder
of how we are all connected
from the Uros
on their floating islands
to the archeologists
in their fragile cloud cities
to the gold miners
scrambling to fill
an insatiable demand.
And this journey
was one big reminder
that the most powerful
force in history
is human nature.
And our little choices
add up to big changes
for better
or worse.