An Oldie, but a Goodie - Caverns Below Peru

Tunnels & the Hollow Earth

My Search for Tunnels in the Earth

Part One
From "World Explorer",
Vol. 2, No. 3.

by David Hatcher Childress

All are architects of fate,

Working the walls of time:

Some with massive deeds and great;

Some with lesser rhyme.

-Longfellow, "The Builders"

What if I told you that I had been
inside a fantastic tunnel system that runs beneath the continent of South America ? Would you think me a liar? Or worse yet,
insane? Though I admit it is a story that seems difficult to believe, I am
telling the truth. Read on, dear reader, and decide if I am mad or lying.

Although it seems incredible,
there is a great deal of evidence to show that a network of ancient tunnels
exists throughout much of South America .
Legends abound on this tunnel system, and I can state that I have even been
inside some of the tunnels on this strangest of continents.

The Gold of the Incas

Legends of tunnels in South America surfaced almost immediately after the
conquest when the Spaniards discovered that the Incas had hidden much of their
treasure-sacred relics of pure gold either beneath the Inca capital of Cuzco or in a secret city
known as Paititi. Either way, legend had it that a tunnel system was used.

The history of the conquest of the
Inca Empire by the Spanish is one of the most bizarre and incredible stories of
history. That Francisco Pizarro with only 183 men could conquer a sophisticated
empire of several million people is a feat that has never been equaled, and
probably never will be!

Pizarro made his first expedition
down the Pacific Coast from Panama in 1527, attracted by rumors
of gold and other treasure. A Greek of his company went alone from the ship
into an Inca village on the coast, and was taken to be a returning god by the
natives. They brought him to a temple filled with more gold than he had seen in
his life. Returning to the ship, he told Pizarro about the fabulous wealth he
had seen. Satisfied that the rumors were true, Pizarro returned to Panama and then
to Spain to prepare another expedition. He set out again in 1531, landed on a lonely
beach in Ecuador and began marching inland. He was entering the newly united Inca empire, which
had just recovered from a civil war. The people of Peru , Bolivia , and rest of the Inca
empire were not all true Incas, but largely Quechua and Aymara Indians. Incas
were the ruling elite, of a different race, who believed themselves descended
from "MancoCapac," a red-haired, bearded messenger from God.

After taking the town of Tumbez and putting quite
of few of the people to death, the Spanish conquistadors continued their march
south. At Cajamarca, they were received by Inca royalty with great pomp,
splendor, and gifts. The ruler of the Incas (or more correctly, "the
Inca") Atahualpa was impressed by their beards and white skin, believing
them tof ulfill a prophecy about the return of Viracocha, the legendary bearded
prophet from a far away land who had visited the South American peoples many
hundreds of years before. American Indians have no facial hair, though the
first Incas are said to have had reddish-brown hair and beards, like Viracocha.
Therefore, Atahualpa believed that the Spanish were Incas themselves, Sons of
the Sun, gods in their own right, just as he, the Inca, was a god.

The conquistadors remained in
Cajamarca for a time, while the Inca showered them with gifts. In fact, the
Incas believed that the horses ridden by the Spaniards were also men, and
assumed by the way the horses constantly chewed on their bits that these were
the horses' fodder. The Incas would put bars of gold and silver in the horses'
feeding troughs, saying, "Eat this, it is much better than iron." The
Spaniards found this quite amusing, and encouraged the Indians to keep bringing
gold and silver for the horses to eat!

Finally, Atahualpa himself came to
the Spaniards from his nearby palace. During this audience inside the walls of
Cajamarca, Atahualpa had with him no less than 30,000 men, all under strict
command not to harm the Spaniards, even if they themselves were attacked. This
prohibition proved to be their downfall. The conquistadors kept many of their
men in hiding, ready to attack, as Pizarro and his generals with the Dominican
friar Vincente de Valverde had their audience with Atahualpa in the townsquare.

The Inca welcomed them as
Viracocha Incas and fellow Sons of the Sun. Then the friar Valverde addressed
the Inca, telling him about the one true faith, and the most powerful men on
earth, the Pope and King Charles of Spain . After a long speech
translated by the Indian Felipe, the Inca asked the source of the friar's
material, who responded by handing the Inca a Bible. The Inca placed it to his
ear. Hearing nothing, he threw it to the ground.

This rather un-pious gesture from
Atahualpa was just what the conquistadors were waiting for. The Spaniards
attacked in full force, many from hiding, and began a slaughter of the Incas.
They killed literally thousands, many of whom were trying to escape. Not one
conquistador was hurt, with the exception of Francisco Pizarro himself, who was
wounded by one of his own men as he reached for Atahualpa.

And so was Atahualpa kidnapped by
a mere 160 gold-crazed conquistadors (some of the original 183 had died of
disease and in earlier battles). To secure his freedom, Atahualpa offered to
give the Spaniards gold in exchange for his release. Sensing that they still
did not realize the fabulous wealth at his command, Atahualpa stood up in the
room in which he was imprisoned and reached as high as he could; he offered to
fill the room with gold to that height in return for his release. The Spaniards
agreed.

Complicating the story at this
point were several intrigues. First, there was a great rivalry between
Francisco Pizarro, his brother Ferdinand, and Don Diego de Almagro. Indeed,
Francisco Pizarro and de Almagro were bitter enemies. Second, Atahualpa was
still at odds with his brother Huascar, who by many accounts was the legitimate
heir to the Inca throne. It had been the civil war between the two brothers
that had weakened the Inca Empire just prior to the arrival of the Spanish.
While he was still in captivity, Atahualpa ordered Huascar arrested, believing
him to be plotting a takeover of the Empire. Both Atahualpa and Huascar now
took a rather fatalistic attitude to the events taking place, as their father
had predicted such a conflict before his death.

Third, most of the subjects of the
Inca Empire were not Incas, but common Indians of entirely different races and
cultural heritages. Few were loyal to the Incas, and many of them eventually
sided with the Spanish. Finally, again from captivity, Atahualpa ordered his
brother Huascar killed, thinking this would save the empire from him, believing
that the Spaniards may not release him even after the ransom was paid. All of
these factors together set the stage for the fall of the greatest civilization
extant in the Western Hemisphere at the time.

It took some time for the gold to
reach Cajamarca, as it had to be brought from Quito , Cuzco ,
and other cities that were hundreds of miles away. While the ransom was being
gathered, Pizarro sent some of the conquistadors as emissaries to Quito and Cuzco to ensure that
Atahualpa had not ordered an assault on Cajamarca. When they returned, they
reported that fabulous wealth was to be found in these cities. The Incas did
not use gold, silver, and precious stones for currency as Europeans and other
cultures did. Instead, they were valued for decoration, and used extensively
for religious objects, furnishings, and even utensils. Many buildings had interior
gold-lined walls, and exterior gold rain gutters and plumbing. Therefore, when
the Inca was ransomed for a roomfull of gold, to the Incas it was as if they
were paying with pots and pans, old plumbing, and rain gutters!

These were sent gladly, though
religious objects and those with esthetic value were not. The ransom paid has
been estimated to have been 600-650 tons of gold and jewels and 384 million
"pesos de oro," the equivalent of $500,000,000 in 1940. Given the
rise in the price of gold since then, today that ransom would be worth almost
five billion dollars.

Not surprisingly, once the ransom
was paid, Atahualpa was not released. The Indian interpreter, Felipe, had
fallen in love with one of Atahualpa's wives, and he was keen to see that the
Inca did not survive. He spread the rumor that Atahualpa was raising an army to
storm Cajamarca. This being the only excuse the Spaniards needed to execute the
Inca, he was condemned to death. Spaniards who had befriended Atahualpa advised
him to convert to Christianity before his execution, which would allow the
Dominical fathers to strangle him as a Christian rather than burn him at the
stake as a heretic. He complied, was baptized, then strangled. This was done
even though more gold was on its way, as part of a second ransom, worth much
more than the first.

Meanwhile, three Spanish
emissaries came back from Cuzco ,
the Inca capital, with even more treasure, looted from the Sun Temple .
They brought an immense cargo of gold and silver vessels loaded on the backs of
200 staggering, sweating Indians. And the second ransom train of 11,000 llamas
was on its way to Pizarro's camp. Loaded with gold, it had been sent by
Atahualpa's queen from Cuzco .
But when they heard of the Inca's assassination, the Indians drove the llamas
off the road and buried the 100 pounds of gold that each animal carried.

Sir Clements Markham, who had a
particularly keen knowledge of Peru ,
believed that the gold was hidden in the mountains behind Azangaro. The
Cordillera de Azangaro is a wild sierra little known to foreigners, the name in
Quechua meaning, "place farthest away." It is believed that this was
the easternmost point in the Andean cordilleras which the old Inca empire
dominated. However, other versions of this story say that the treasure was
hidden in a system of tunnels that goes through the Andes .

One fantastic treasure story
involves "The Garden of the Sun." Sarmiento,a Spanish historian
(1532-1589), wrote that this subterranean garden was located near the Temple of the Sun.
"They had a garden in which the lumps of earth were pieces of fine gold.
These were cleverly sown with maize the stalks, leaves and ears of which were
all of gold. They were so well planted that nothing would disturb them. Besides
all this, they had more than twenty sheep with their young. The shepherds who
guarded the sheep were armed with slings and staves made of gold. There were
large numbers of jars of gold and silver pots, vases, and every kind of
vessel."

Shortly after the conquest of
Peru, Cieza de Leon, part Inca and part Spanish, wrote, "If all the gold
that is buried in Peru ... were collected, it would be impossible to coin it,
so great the quantity; and yet the Spaniards of the conquest got very little,
compared with what remains. The Indians said, 'The treasure is so concealed
that even we, ourselves, know not the hiding place!'

"If, when the Spaniards
entered Cuzco they had not committed other tricks, and had not so soon executed
their cruelty in putting Atahualpa to death, I know not how many great ships
would have been required to bring such treasures to old Spain as is now lost in
the bowels of the earth and will remain so because those who buried it are now
dead."

What Cieza de Leon did not say was
that, although the Indians as a whole did not know where this treasure lay,
there were a few among them who did know and closely guarded the secret.

After seeing the fineness of the
treasures in Atahualpa's first ransom, Pizarro had demanded that he be shown
the source of this fabulous wealth before he would release the Inca. He had
heard that the Incas possessed a secret and inexhaustible mine or depository,
which lay in a vast, subterranean tunnel running many miles underground. Here
was supposedly kept the accumulated riches of the country.

However, legend has it that
Atahualpa's queen consulted the Black Mirrorat the Temple of the Sun, a sort of magic mirror
similar to that in the story of Snow White. In it she saw the fate of her
husband, whether she paid the ransom or not. She realized that her husband and
the empire were doomed and that she must certainly not reveal the secret of the
tunnels or wealth to the gold crazed conquistadors.

The horrified queen ordered that
the entrance to the great tunnel be closed under the direction of the priests
and magicians. A large door into a rocky wall of a cliff gorge near Cuzco , it was sealed by
filling its depths with huge masses of rock. Then the disguised entrance was
hidden under green grass and bushes, so that not the slightest sign of any
fissure was perceptible to the eye.

Conquistadors, adventurers,
treasure hunters, and historians have all wondered about and pursued this
legend. What incredible treasure did the Incas seal into these tunnels? And as
to the tunnels themselves, when and how were they made, and where do they go?

Researchers like Harold Wilkins
believed that the tunnels run from the central Andes around Cuzco for hundreds of miles north and south through the mountains, as far as Chile and Ecuador .
Wilkins believed that there were other spurs of these tunnels that ran to the
east, coming out at the lost city of Paititi in the high jungle somewhere. Another spur was said to run to the west, down to
the coastal desert of Peru . This spur of the
tunnel system could have come out near Lima ,
the area of the ancient Inca city of Pachacamac ,
or near Pisac and the Candlestick of the Andes ,
which is further south along the coast.

Wilkins believed, as did
apparently Madame Blavatsky (a well known psychic and founder of The
Theosophical Society), that a spur of the ancient tunnel system came out in the
Atacama Desert near to Arica and the current border between Chile and Peru,
which is further south still. Madame Blavatsky related the story, retold by
Wilkins, of the ancient treasure and tunnel system.

Sometime around the year 1844, a
Catholic priest was called to absolve a dying Quechua Indian. Whispering
quietly to the priest, the old Indian told an amazing story about a labyrinth
and a series of tunnels built far before the days of the Inca emperors of the
Sun. It was told under the inviolable seal of the confessional, and could not
be divulged by the priest under pain of death. This story would probably never
have been told, except that the priest, while traveling to Lima , met with a "sinister Italian."
The priest let out a hint of great treasure, and was later supposedly
hypnotized by the Italian to get him tell the story!

"I will reveal to thee what
no White man, be he Spaniard, or American, or English, knows," the dying
Indian had said to the priest. He then told of the queen's closing of the
tunnels when the Inca Atahualpa was being held captive by Pizarro. The priest
added under hypnosis that the Peruvian government, in about 1830, had heard
rumors of these tunnels and sent an expedition out to find and explore them.
They were unsuccessful.

In another similar story, the
Father Pedro del Sancho tells in his Relacion that in the early period of the
conquest of Peru ,
another dying Indian made a confession. Father del Sancho wrote, "...my
informant was a subject of the Incan Emperor. He was held in high esteem by
those in power at Cuzco .
He had been a chieftain of his tribe and made a yearly pilgrimage to Cuzco to worship his
idolistic gods. It was a custom of the Incas to conquer a tribe or nation and
take their idols to Cuzco .
Those who wished to worship their ancient idols were forced to travel to the
Incan capital. They brought gifts to their heathen idols. They were also
expected to pay homage to the Incan emperor during these journeys."

Del Sancho continues, "These
treasures were placed in ancient tunnels that were in the land when the Incas
arrived. Also placed in these subterranean repositories were artifacts and
statues deemed sacred to the Incas. When the hoard had been placed in the tunnels,
there was a ceremony conducted by the high priest. Following these rites, the
entrance to the tunnels was sealed in such a manner that one could walk within
a few feet and never be aware of the entrance.

"...My informant said that
the entrance lay in his land, the territory which he ruled. It was under his
direction and by his subjects that the openings were sealed. All who were in
attendance were sworn to silence under the penalty of death. Although I
requested more information on the exact location of the entrance, my informant
refused to divulge more than what has been written down here."

Another interesting story of the
tunnels around Cuzco and the incredible treasure they contain involves Carlos Inca, a descendant of
an Inca emperor, who had married a Spanish lady, Dona Maria Esquivel. His
Castilian wife thought that he was not ambitious enough, and that he did not
keep her in the style she deemed befitting her rank, or his descent.

Poor Carlos was plagued night and
day by his wife's nagging, until lateone night, he blindfolded her and led her
out into the patio of the hacienda. Under the cold light of the stars, when all
around were asleep and no unseen eye was on the watch, he began to lead her by
the shoulders. Although he was exposing himself to many risks including torture
and death at the hands of the Quechuas, he proceeded to reveal his secret. He
twirled her around three times, then, assuming her disoriented, led her down
some steps into a concealed vault in or under Sacsayhuaman Fortress. When he
removed her blinds, her tongue was finally silenced. She stood on the dusty,
stone floor of an ancient vault, cluttered with gold and silver ingots,
exquisite jewelry, and temple ornaments. Around the walls, ranged in fine gold,
were life-size statues of long dead Inca kings. Only the golden Disk of the
Sun, which the old Incas treasured most, was missing.

Carlos Inca was supposedly one of
the custodians of the secret hiding place of Inca treasure that eluded the
Spanish and other treasure seekers for centuries. The U.S. Commissioner to Peru in 1870
commented on this episode: "All I can say is if that secret chamber which
she had entered has not been found and despoiled, it has not been for want of
digging ...Three-hundred years have not sufficed to eradicate the notion that
enormous treasures are concealed within the fortress of Cuzco . Nor have three-hundred years of
excavation, more or less constant, entirely discouraged the searchers for
tapadas, or treasure mounds."

There certainly appears to be some
repetition and borrowing between some of these stories. Yet most historians and
archaeologists believe that they are based on some fact. That tunnels and lost
treasure exist, there seems to be no doubt. But the real questions are, where
are they? And, who made them?

The treasure of the Incas is
believed to still be hidden in the tunnels that run under Cuzco and the ruins of the megalithic
fortress mentioned above called Sacsayhuaman.

The Fortress of Sacsayhuaman

The stories of a subterranean
world fascinated me and I decided that South America was a good place to investigate whatever reality there might be in the many
legends. Lost treasure has its appeal as well, and many tunnels would probably
never be explored if it were not for some promised treasure at the end.

I began my search in Peru where I
visited Ica ,
Pisco and Nazca to look at the mummies, geoglyphs and catacombs. I then
continued on to Cuzco to look into the tunnels that were rumored to be in the vicinity.

During this visit I went to Sacsayhuaman.
The road leads up from the Plaza de Armas to a hill on the north side of Cuzco . At a leveling off
of the hill, looking over the Cuzco Valley , is the colossal
fortress, one of the most imposing edifices ever constructed. Walking around,
we could hardly believe our eyes! Here was a stone structure that covered the
entire hill; it appeared almost unworldly. It contains tunnel entrances that
are sealed. The visitor can walk a short distance inside some of the tunnels,
but they are ultimately blocked after 20 or 30 feet.

All over Sacsayhuaman gigantic
blocks of stone, some weighing more than 200 tons (400 thousand pounds) are
fitted together perfectly. The enormous stone blocks are cut, faced, and fitted
so well that even today one cannot slip the blade of a knife, or even a piece
of paper between them. No mortar is used, and no two blocks are alike. Yet they
fit perfectly, and it has been said by some engineers that no modern builder
with the aid of tools of the finest steel could produce results more accurate.

Each individual stone had to have
been planned well in advance; a 20-tonstone, let alone one weighing 80 to 200
tons, cannot just be dropped casually into position with any hope of attaining
that kind of accuracy! The stones are locked and dovetailed into position,
making them earthquake-proof. Indeed, after many devastating earthquakes in the
Andes over the last few hundred years, the
blocks are still perfectly fitted, while the Spanish Cathedral in Cuzco has been leveled
twice.

Though this fantastic fortress was
supposedly built just a few hundred years ago by the Incas, they leave no
record of having built it, nor does it figure in any of their legends. How is
it that the Incas, who reportedly had no knowledge of higher mathematics, no written
language, no iron tools, and did not even use the wheel, are credited with
having built this cyclopean complex of walls and buildings? Frankly, one must
literally grope for an explanation, and it is not an easy one.

When the Spaniards first arrived
in Cuzco and
saw these structures, they thought that they had been built by the devil
himself, because of their enormity. Indeed, nowhere else can you see such large
blocks placed together so perfectly. I have traveled all over the world
searching for ancient mysteries and lost cities, but I had never in my life
seen anything like this!

The builders of the stoneworks
were not merely good stone masons- they were excellent! Similar stoneworks can
be seen throughout the Cuzco Valley . These are usually
made up of finely cut, rectangular blocks of stone weighing up to perhaps a
ton. A group of strong people could lift a block and put it in place; this is
undoubtably how some of the smaller structures were put together. But in
Sacsayhuaman, Cuzco ,
and other ancient Inca cities, one can see gigantic blocks cut with 30 or more
angles each.

At the time of the Spanish
conquest, Cuzco was at its peak, with perhaps 100,000 Inca subjects living in the ancient city.
The fortress of Sacsayhuaman could hold the entire population within its walls
in case of war or natural catastrophe. Some historians have stated that the
fortress was built a few years before the Spanish invasion, and that the Incas
take credit for the structure. But, the Incas could not recall exactly how or when
it was built!

The Spanish dismantled as much of
Sacsayhuaman as they could. When Cuzco was first conquered, Sacsayhuaman had three round towers at the top of the
fortress, behind three concentric megalithic walls. These were taken apart
stone by stone, and the stones used to build new structures for the Spanish.

Sacsayhuaman was also equipped
with a subterranean network of aqueducts. Water was brought down from the
mountains into a valley, then had to ascend a hill before reaching
Sacsayhuaman. This indicates that the engineers who built the intricate system
knew that water rises to its own level.

Garcilaso de la Vega, who wrote
just after the conquest, said this about the tunnels beneath Sacsayhuaman:
"An underground network of passages, which was as vast as the towers
themselves, connected them with one another. This was composed of a quantity of
streets and alleyways which ran in every direction, and so many doors, all of
them identical, that the most experienced men dared not venture into this labyrinth
without a guide, consisting of a long thread tied to the first door, which
unwound as they advanced. I often went up to the fortress with boys of my own
age, when I was a child, and we did not dare to go farther than the sunlight
itself, we were so afraid of getting lost, after all that the Indians had told
us on the subject ... the roofs of these underground passages were composed of
large flat stones resting on rafters jutting out from the walls."

There are indeed tunnels that one
may enter at Sacsayhuaman and nearby Qenqo. If one walks behind the Inca's
stone seat inside the fortress toward Qenqo, one will find all sorts of bizarre
stone cuttings, upside-down staircases, and seemingly sensless rock carving on
a grandscale. There are also tunnel entrances in this area. Various rock-cut
tunnels lead down into the earth and at least one goes to another part of the
mountain area of Qenqo. All of these tunnels are blocked at some point and this
area of Sacsayhuaman is still being excavated by Peruvian archaeologists.

The area is quite fascinating, but
it seems quite clear that one cannot penetrate into the tunnels beneath Cuzco from these
now-blocked tunnel entrances.

The old chroniclers say the
tunnels were connected with the Coricancha, a name given to the Sun Temple and its surrounds in old Cuzco .

The Coricancha was originally
larger than it is today and contained many ancient temples, including the
Temples of the Sun and the Moon, and all of these buildings were believed to be
connected with Sacsayhuaman by underground tunnels. The place where these
tunnels started was known as the Chincana, or "the place where one gets
lost." This entrance was known up until the mid-1800s, when it was walled
up.

continued in part two

Subterranean Tunnels & the Hollow Earth
My Search for Tunnels in the Earth
Part Two

From "World Explorer", Vol. 2, No. 3.

by David Hatcher Childress

All are architects of fate,

Working the walls of time:

Some with massive deeds and great;

Some with lesser rhyme.

-Longfellow "The Builders"

Continued from part one:

In his book "Jungle Paths and Inca Ruins", Dr.William
Montgomery McGovern states:

"Near this fortress [Sacsayhuaman] are several strange caverns
reaching far into the earth. Here altars to the Gods of the Deep were carved
out of the living rock, and the many bones scattered about tell of the
sacrifices which were offered up here. The end of one of these caverns,
Chincana, has never been found. It is supposed to communicate by a long
underground passage with the Temple of the Sun in the heart of Cuzco .
In this cavern is supposed, and with good reason, to be hidden a large part of the
golden treasure of the Inca Emperors which was stored away lest it fall into
the hands of the Spaniards. But the cavern is so huge, so complicated, and its
passages are so manifold, that its secret has never been discovered."

"One man, indeed, is said to have found his way underground to
the Sun Temple , and when he emerged, to have had
two golden bars in his hand. But his mind had been affected by days of blind
wandering in the subterranean caves, and he died almost immediately afterwards.
Since that time many have gone into the cavern-never to return again. Only a
month or two before my arrival the disappearance of three prominent people in
this Inca cave caused the Prefect of the Province of Cuzco to wall in the mouth of the cavern, so that the secret and the treasures of the
Incas seem likely to remain forever undiscovered."

Another story, which may well be derived from the same source, tells
of a treasure hunter who went into the tunnels and wandered through the maze
for several days. One morning, about a week after the adventurer had vanished,
a priest was conducting mass in the church of Santo Domingo . The
priest and his congregation were astonished to hear sudden, sharp rappings from
beneath the church's stone floor. Several worshipers crossed themselves and
murmured about the devil. The priest quieted his congregation, then directed
the removal of a large stone slab from the floor (this was the converted Temple of the Sun!). The
group was surprised to see the treasure hunter emerge with a bar of gold in
each hand.

Even the Peruvian government got into the act of exploring these Cuzco tunnels, ostensibly
for scientific purposes. The Peruvian Seria Documental del Peru describes an
expedition undertaken by staff from Lima University in 1923.
Accompanied by experienced speleologists, the party penetrated the
trapezoid-shaped tunnels starting from an entrance atCuzco.

They took measurements of the subterranean aperture and advanced in
the direction of the coast. After a few days, members of the expedition at the
entrance of the tunnel lost contact with the explorers inside, and no
communication came for twelve days. Then a solitary explorer returned to the
entrance, starving. His reports of an underground labyrinth of tunnels and
deadly obstacles would make an Indiana Jones movie seem tame by comparison. His
tale was so incredible that his colleagues declared him mad. To prevent further
loss of life in the tunnels, the police dynamited the entrance.

More recently, the big Lima earthquake of 1972 brought to light a tunnel system beneath that coastal city.
During salvage operations, workers found long passages no one had ever known
existed. The following systematic examination of Lima 's foundations led to the astonishing
discovery that large parts of the city were undercut by tunnels, all leading
into the mountains. But their terminal points could no longer be ascertained
because they had collapsed during the course of the centuries. Did the Cuzco tunnels explored in
1923 lead to Lima ?
As farback as the 1940s, Harold Wilkins, in his books ("Mysteries of
Ancient South America" and "Secret Cities of Old South America ")
wrote that they did.

Tunnels to the Hidden City of Paititi ?

In my quest for the lost treasure of the Incas and the tunnel
systems associated with it, I joined up in the search for Paititi, the ultimate
lost city of the Incas according to Cuzco legends.

While the Incas placed some of their hoard in the Cuzco tunnel system to hide it from the
conquering Spanish, other treasure (including 14 gold-clad mummies of the
former Inca emperors removed from the Sun Temple )
was sent by llama caravan into the Antisuyo region of South
America , the mountain jungle area east of Cuzco . The caravan's destination was a
mountain-jungle city called "Paikikin" in Quechua which is supposed
to mean "like the other." The Spanish called this city El Gran
Paititi.

It is well known that the Incan Empire at its height stretched from
north of Quito in Ecuador ,
south along the Andes and west to the coast,
all the way down into central Chile .
What is not generally known is just how far east the Incas had set up their
roads, trade routes and cities. The Incas did have a trade network that
stretched eastward deep into the jungles on the east side of the Andes . Salt was frequently carried across the mountains
in exchange for gold and feathers. According to Jorge Arellano, director of the
Institute of Archaeology in La Paz, Bolivia, Inca ruins have been found in the
Bolivian state of Beni, which is several hundred miles east of the Andes and in
dense jungle. He says that a series of small fortresses in the jungle form a
line in an easterly direction. He believes that the Incas used these fortresses
as stop overs on their migration from the Madre de Dios area of Peru ,
believed by some to be the site of Paititi.

Though there is little doubt that Paititi did exist, there is a
great deal of myth surrounding this lost city. Harold Wilkins believes that the
Incas escaped from the Spanish after the battle of Ollantaytambo by fleeing
through a branch of the tunnel system discussed earlier, heading east toward
Paititi. This may well be true, though it was hardly necessary for the Incas to
have fled through a tunnel. They could have left by canoe, then crossed the
mountains using the excellent Inca roads.

Assuming this tunnel did exist, Wilkins thinks it went due east from
Cuzco , through
the jungles, to the empire of Paititi. He indicates that Paititi was a separate
kingdom, ruled by mysterious white men whose king was known as the "Tiger
King." According to Wilkins, Paititi means "jaguar." The Tiger
King, or Jaguar King, lived in a white house by a great lake.

In 1681, a Jesuit missionary named Fray Lucero wrote of information
given to him by Indians in the Rio Huallagu area of northeastern Peru . They told
him that the lost city of Gran Paititi lay behind the forests and mountains east of Cuzco .

The Jesuit wrote, "This empire of Gran Paytite has bearded,
white Indians. The nation called Curveros, these Indians told me, dwell in a
place called Yurachuasi or the 'white house.' For king, they have a descendant
of the Inca Tupac Amaru, who with 40,000 Peruvians, fled far away into the
forests, before the face of the conquistadors of Francisco Pizarro's day in AD
1533. He took with him a rich treasure, and the Castilians who pursued him
fought each other in the forests, leaving the savage Chuncho Indios, who
watched their internecine struggles, to kill off the wounded and shoot the
survivors with arrows. I myself have been shown plates of gold and half-moons
and ear-rings of gold that have come from this mysterious nation." This
story is independently documented in the book "Amazonas y El Maranon"
by Fray Manuel Rodriguez, published in 1684, according to Wilkins.

Many people seem to confuse Gran Paititi and El Dorado , though the legends locate them
thousands of miles apart. El Dorado is often believed to be in the vicinity of the Orinoco River near the borders of Columbia ,
Venezuela and Brazil . In
early 1559, the Viceroy of Peru wanted to rid his country of unemployed
soldiers and troublesome Spanish adventurers, so he sent a party of 370
Spaniards and thousands of Andean Indians on an expedition down the Amazon in
search of a legendary city of gold. This expedition was an utter failure,
during which the men mutinied, and a psychopathic soldier, Lope de Aguirre,
killed the leader Pedro de Ursua. Taking over the expedition, he abandoned the
search for " El Dorado ,"
vowing to return and conquer Peru itself. This wild and incredible adventure, during which the women warriors
known as Amazons were first reported, and the Amazon River was first navigated, was made into a German movie called, Aguirre: The Wrath of
God.

This disastrous expedition was the beginning of the confusion
between El Dorado and Paititi, the real city of gold. It searched in an area far removed from
where Paititi appears to be located, and this is why most adventurers after
" El Dorado "
searched in the vicinity of Columbia and Venezuela instead of Peru ,
where the legends actually originated.

One adventurer who searched for Paititi was Pedro Bohorques, a
penniless soldier who pretended to be a nobleman. In 1659, after serving in Chile ,
Bohorques became a wanderer. Calling himself Don Pedro el Inca, he swore that
royal Inca blood flowed through his veins. Bohorques set himself up as emperor
of an Indian kingdom at the headwaters of the Huallaga River south of Cuzco .
He converted almost 10,000 Pelados Indians into his service, and declared all
Spaniards fair game. He also sent some of his followers on a search for
Paititi, hoping to find the treasure.

When these men did not come back with gold, Bohorques left his
empire and went to Lima .
Unfortunately, the Spaniards had heard of his decree against them, threw him in
prison, and sentenced him to death. He pled for his life, promising to reveal
the location of the Kingdom of Gran Paititi if he was
released. The judges refused his offer, but many gold hunters visited him in
prison, begging him to share his secret with them. He refused, and went to the
gallows in 1667, much to the chagrin of the treasure hunters of Lima .

Actually, it is not likely that Bohorques knew the location of
Paititi (since his adventurers returned without gold), though he was in the
correct area, and may have learned the general location. Also, Paititi was
probably still a living city at this time, so it would have been difficult for
Bohorques or anyone else to enter.

Of course, the search for Gran Paititi still continues, and many
explorers feel that they are getting close. Today, many feel that Paititi is
somewhere in the Paucartambo area of Peru , east of Cuzco toward the Madre de Dios River .
This is the same area in which Fray Lucero indicated that Gran Paititi could be
found. Some expeditions, however, because they either found the city or
disturbed the Indians too much in their search, end up dead. Boston anthropologist Gregory Deyermenjian
and British photographer Michael Mirecki mounted their own expedition into this
area in 1984. Their goal was a jungle mountain in eastern Peru called
Apucatinti. I accompanied Deyermenjian.

According to many sources, the mountain on which Paititi is located
is called Apucatinti, though exactly which mountain is really Apucatinti is
open for debate. The word means "Lord of the Sun" in Quechua, and any
mountain with this name (there are several) is a good candidate for having
Paititi on it.

As noted above, Paititi comes from the Quechua word
"Paikikin" which means "the same as the other" which has
also been translated as "the same as Cuzco ."
What could it mean, "The same as Cuzco ?"
Deyermenjian thinks that this indicates Paititi is another stone city, similar
in its construction to that found at Cuzco and Sacsayhuaman; a megalithic city like Machu
Picchu . On the other hand, it may mean that Paititi is
like Cuzco in
the sense that it is the abode of the Inca kings, as Cuzco once was. If Paititi was built from
scratch by the retreating Inca royal fringe, then the ruins are more likely to
be similar to those found at Espiritu Pampa: small and unimpressive. Machu Picchu also has
part of a tunnel that can be found off the trail on the northern part of the
city.

Historically, Gran Paititi was not reported as being located on top
of a mountain, but rather by a lake. If these older reports are correct,
Paititi may be further into the jungles to the east or south. Some researchers
even believe that it may still be a living city, where the Inca tradition is
still carried on. Many areas, particularly to the east, could have remained
under Inca control for quite some time after the Spanish conquest.

Then again, Apucatinti may well be the site of a long-dead Paititi.
Demoralized and cut off from their former empire, the surviving Incas could
have existed on top of this remote mountain in a self-sufficient city much like
Machu Picchu ,
until they died out. Deyermenjian backs this theory, and thinks that the city
effectively died about the year 1600, a mere 30 or 40 years after the Incas
escaped to their refuge there.

In June of 1986, I accompanied Greg Deyermenjian and a party of
Peruvians to scale the Apucatinti in Mameria. It took one week by horseback to
the edge of the jungle, and a further two weeks of living with Machiguenga
Indians in effort to scale the peak. We discovered Inca buildings, ovens, tombs
and coca plantations, as well as the first-ever structures in the Madre de Dios
district of Peru, but the ascent to the top of the mountain was extremely
difficult. The mountain has no fresh water, and is covered in thick, almost
impenetrable jungle. We ascended the mountain for five days from the base, with
Machiguenga Indians leading the way. However, after running out of food and
water, we had to return to the Indian village.

In August of 1986, Deyermenjian returned to Mameria by himself, and
made it to the summit of Apucatinti with his Indian guides. To their
disappointment, neither Paititi nor any other structures were at the summit of
the mountain. It had been a false lead, but it had looked like a good prospect.
Deyermenjian continued to search for Paititi, focusing on a nearby area that
was even more remote than Mameria and Apucatinti. It urned my attentions to Bolivia .

A Tunnel in Eastern Bolivia

With several old friends from the World Explorers Club, including
Carl Hart, Steve Yenouskas, and Raul Fernandez, I journeyed to Peru and Bolivia to
discover what we could of the tunnels in South America .
After a week in Peru ,
we set off one day from Cuzco for Tiahuanaco and then to eastern Bolivia to the
strange hilltop city of Samaipata .
I had visited Samaipata by myself in the mid-80s, and wrote about the strange
"fort" in my book "Lost Cities & Ancient Mysteries of South
America".

At the time, I was the 153rd person to visit the site since it had
be enopened to the public in 1974.

Erich von Daniken had visited the site in the early 70s and had
described it as a "rocket launching pad" for his alien visitors. The
site itself was bizarre enough: high on the summit of mountain was a large
outcrop of rock that had been cut into various rooms, channels, pools, chairs,
petroglyphs and odd, crisscross grooves.

The whole place was extremely ancient and worn, and apparently there
had once been walls and buildings that were now long gone. A large jaguar was
carved into the solid at the western end of the "fort." Was Samaipata
a cult center for the jaguar? Was it a mining city? Or possibly a remotef ort
on the eastern edge of the mountain highlands, watching over the lower valleys
to the east? No archaeologist has so far come up with an answer to Samaipata, including
who built the "city" and when. On a National Geographic map of
archaeological sites in South America that I
carried with me, Samaipata was not even listed.

The strangest part of Samaipata was a feature that was hidden in the
jungle about a 100 meters south of the main fort, a tunnel into the ground that
was called by the locals the Camino de la Chinchana, or the "Path of the
Subterranean."

The Camino de la Chinchana was a tunnel that began as a two-meter
opening to a pit that went straight down for about 6 meters. Once one had made
the first descent down to the floor of the pit, something that would take a
rope or a ladder, then one would find himself standing in a tunnel that was
high enough and wide enough for a man to stand without stooping. This tunnel
then descended downhill from the fort, apparently going in a northwest
direction.

According to the caretaker of Samaipata, the tunnel had been
explored once by Bolivian archaeologists who had entered the pit with a rope
and had advanced some 100 meters or more into the tunnel. The air became stale
and a small cave-in had blocked a portion of the tunnel. Without proper
breathing gear, the team was unable to advance any farther into the earth.

The tunnel was clearly man-made, and at least around the entrance,
it was dug out of dirt, rather than cut out of solid rock. I asked the
caretaker of Samaipata where this tunnel was supposed to go. He pointed to the
north, across the valley, to a mountain about 15 kilometers away. This mountain
looked something like the back molar in a row of teeth.

"There", he said, pointing to the mountain, "there to
La Muela el Diablo, is where the archaeologists say that the tunnel goes. On
that mountain is supposed to be another city, just as here."

Using my dictionary, I translated La Muela el Diablo as "The
Devil's Dimple." This tunnel was said to run from the top of the mountain of Samaipata down to the valley, beneath a
river, and then up to a mountain on the other side.

Carl, Steve, Raul and I made a brief search of the area around the
Devil's Dimple but could not find evidence of any lost city or of a tunnel
entrance. It was a cursory exploration that proved or disproved little. Still
the fact remained that the entrance to a bizarre man-made tunnel, one that was
apparently thousands of years old, existed at the weird ruins of Samaipata.

Was it the entrance to a lost mine used thousands of years ago? Was
it a spur of the legendary tunnels near Cuzco ?
The thought that one might be able to enter into a vast labyrinth of tunnels
beneath the Andes by entering the Camino tic
la Chinchana was an exciting thought. The entrance still exists at Samaipata,
waiting for a bold adventurer with the right equipment to discover its secrets.
But for myself and Carl, we were to continue on to Brazil and the even more intriguing
tunnel entrance at Sao Tome das Letras near Sao Paulo .

The Tunnel Beneath Sao Tome das
Letras.

Our WEX team had to split up, with Steve and Raul returning to Peru and the U.S. while Carl
and I headed down to Corumba, the Bolivian bordertown with Brazil . From
there we took a bus through the Matto Grosso to Sao Paulo , the largest city in South America .

In Sao Paulo Carl and I visited my Brazilian publisher and various Brazilian friends. I had
received a letter from a Brazilian woman who had read the Portuguese version of
my book Lost Cities & Ancient Mysteries of South America and had written me
a letter concerning the opening to a tunnel system at the resort mountain town
of Sao Tome das
Letras. Her name was Marli and she worked at one of the many banks in Sao Paulo .

Carl and I met with Marli one night for dinner and she told us about
the town and the tunnel entrance. Sao Tome das
Letras is Portuguese for " Saint
Thomas of the Letters" and is the rather long name
of a small town north of Sao Paulo that, like Samaipata in Bolivia ,
is on the top of a mountain. Sao Tome das
Letras is in fact a well-known tourist town in Sao Paulo state, though I had never heard of
it. Being on top of a mountain, it had good views, was cooler than Sao Paulo , and offered
hiking trails, good restaurants and an artist colony for atmosphere. It also
had the entrance to a man-made tunnel system, a feature well known to visitors
of the small town.

Carl and I suggested to Marli that the three of us take a trip to Sao Tome das Letras and see the entrance to the tunnel
system. She agreed to accompany the two of us as our guide and interpreter. We
left the next day, taking a bus for some four or five hours out of Sao Paulo , heading on a
major highway toward the city of Belo
Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais.

Soon the bus turned off the main road and headed up a narrow paved
road for some distant, low mountains. Eventually the road wound its way to the
top of one of the mountains and we found ourselves in Sao
Tome das Letras.

Carl, Marli and I grabbed our luggage from beneath the bus and stood
on the cobblestone street at the lower edge of town. There were many quaint
houses, all made of well carved stone with tile roofs and small windows. I
noticed that stonework and even stacks of stone slate, was everywhere. Sao Tome das Letras was not only a tourist town, it was
also a mountaintop quarry.

We walked up the main street and found a small hotel to spend the
night, leaving our packs and other luggage in the hotel. By now it was late
afternoon and we had only time to walk about town and familiarize ourselves
with this pleasant area.

Later, Marli took us to a local restaurant where a crowd of young
people had gathered to hear the local restaurant owner talk about the mysteries
of Sao Tome das Letras. He was a large man, in
his 50s, who spoke in Portuguese to the 20 or so people gathered in his
restaurant.

The crowd listened intently as the man spoke and occasionally I
asked Marli what he was saying.

"He is talking about the tunnel that is at the northern edge of
town," said Marli, whispering to me. "He says that the tunnel is open
as far as anyone has ever walked through it. At no place is the tunnel blocked.
The tunnel is man-made, but no one knows who built it or where it goes."

"The Brazilian army went into the tunnel one time to find out
where it ends. After travelling for four days through the tunnel the team of
Army explorers eventually came to a large room deep underground. This room had
four openings to four tunnels, each going in a different direction. They had
arrived in the room by one of the tunnels."

"They stayed in the room for sometime, using it as their base
and attempted to explore each of the other three tunnels, but after following
each for some time, turned back to the large room. Eventually they returned to
the surface, here at Sao Tome das
Letras."

The man continued talking about the tunnel.

Apparently he gave this lecture every night at his restaurant.

"Now he is saying," continued Marli, "that there is a
man here in town who claims to know the tunnel and claims that he has been many
weeks inside the tunnel. This man claims that the tunnel goes all the way to Peru , to Machu Picchu in the Andes . This man claims that he went completely under South America , across Brazil and to Machu Picchu . Isn't that amazing!"

I raised an eyebrow and looked at Carl. He nodded to me at the
fantastic nature of the story. "Does this restaurant owner say that he has
been through the tunnel to Peru ?"
asked Carl.

"No," said Marli, "it is not this man, it is another
man. I don't know who this other man is. But now he is telling another story,
this time it is about himself. He says that he was walking early in the morning
on the north side of town, near to the tunnel entrance. On this morning, he
suddenly met a strange man walking in the area of the tunnel. This man was very
tall, about seven feet, and dressed strangely, like the Indians of the Andes in Peru and Bolivia .
The man did not talk to him, but walked away. Later, the restaurant owner tried
to find this man, but no one knew about him or knew who he was . The restaurant
owner thinks that he came from the tunnel!"

As we left the restaurant, Carl, Marli and I were quite stunned. It
all seemed so incredible.

"Well, Marli," I said, "tomorrow we must see this
tunnel and explore it!"

The next morning after breakfast, we checked our flashlights, put
water and snacks into our daypacks, and set off up the cobblestone streets of Sao Tome das Letras to the north side of town.

It didn't take long to find the tunnel entrance; already four or
five young people were gathered around the entrance looking into the wide
cavern.

The entrance was quite large. It was a wide mouth of a cave with a
mound of dirt creating a small hill over the entrance. The cavern entrance
faced to the west and immediately began running down hill, into the earth. The
tunnel/ cavern would have to go downhill, as we were essentially on top of a
mountain.

With our flashlights in hand, we entered the cavern. Within a few
meters, the cavern entrance narrowed into a tunnel which was about three meters
(9 feet) high and two meters wide. The tunnel was dug out of dirt, and was not
cut out of solid rock, as some tunnels are.

The tunnel headed down ward at a steady slope, but it was not too
steep. As mall channel, made by running water moving through this part of the
tunnel (and perhaps by the visitors walking through it) was in the middleof the
floor, sort of a small "trail" worn into the floor. At no point was
it ever necessary to duck, stoop or crawl in this tunnel. Quite the opposite,
it was quite wide and high, even for the tallest man to walk through, even
someone who was, say, seven feet tall!

I was amazed at this ancient feat of engineering. We were descending
down into the earth in a wide, gradually slopping tunnel that was dug into a
red, clay-type dirt. It was not the smooth, laser-cut rock walls that Erich von
Daniken had claimed to have seen in Ecuador in his book Gold of the Gods,
but it was just as incredible.

It wouldn't have taken some space-age device to make this tunnel,
just simple tools; yet, it was clearly a colossal undertaking. Why would anyone
build such a tunnel? Was it an ancient mine that went deep into the earth,
searching for an elusive vein of gold or merely red clay for the long gone
ceramic kilns? Was it an elaborate escape tunnel used in the horrific wars that
were said to have been fought in South America -and
around the world-in the distant past? Or was it some bizarre subterranean road
that linked up with other tunnels in the Andes and ultimately could be used to journey safely to such places as Machu Picchu , Cuzco or the Atacama Desert ? Maybe a combination of all three.

Marli, Carl and I continued walking through the tunnel for a
kilometer or so. Other visitors to Sao Tome das Letras followed us into the subterranean system. The tunnel was not
perfectly straight, but wound left and right and occasionally dropped down a
few feet and continued on.It was perfectly dry and the air was fresh and quite
breathable.

Eventually, after an hour or so, we came to a spot in the tunnel
where it suddenly dropped down about a meter and a half. It was not a great
obstacle and we could see the tunnel continuing downward, but it was a
convenient place to stop. We had a candy bar and a drink from our daypacks and
rested at this spot and then decided to go back to the surface. We had no
intention of continuing for several days to the fabled room of four doors deep
beneath Brazil .
We simply weren't prepared for such an expedition.

Back on the surface, we had lunch in one of the restaurants and
prepared to get a bus back to Sao
Paulo . We talked about the bizarre tunnel. It was
real, there was no doubt about that. It was man-made as well, as the tunnel was
perfectly uniform and contained no fissures or faults of any kind.

Did it really go to Machu
Picchu and the Andes ?
It seemed incredible, but we could not discount this story. Not yet anyway.
Perhaps in the future we would return to Sao Tome das Letras, and find the secret of the room with four doors.

The Lost Pyramid in the Valley of the Blue Moon.

Back at the World Explorers Club, I began investigating other tales
of tunnels and lost cities in Peru .
My search eventually led me to the strange story of the Valley of the Blue Moon
and a secret monastery of the Andes .

This monastery is the subject of a book, "Secret of the Andes ", by George Hunt Williamson, written under the
pen name Brother Philip. Williamson was also the author of anumber of other
books, including "The Saucers Speak" (1954), "Other Tongues,
Other Flesh" (1957), "Secret Places of the Lion" (1958) and
"Road in the Sky" (1959). He was an adventurer and anthropologist,
and a believer in lost continents. Williamson was no doubt a fascinating person
(he died in 1986), however it is clear that he fabricated much of the
"true" information in his books and even used material typed directly
from Richard Shaver's book "I Remember Lemuria!" as his own past life
"memories."

But George Hunt Williamson cannot be dismissed too easily. He must
be given credit for bringing some of the popular mysteries of South
Americain to the forefront. Williamson had made expeditions into
the Madre deDios jungles of Peru in search of Paititi in the early 1950s, as many British explorers were
attempting to do. In his various books, he talked about many of the mysteries
of Peru including Paititi, tunnel systems, the weird stone formations on the Marcahuasi
Plateau near Lima ,
and the Nazca Lines along the southern coast. Undoubtedly, later writers such
as Erich von Daniken, Charles Berlitz and Robert Charroux used his writings as
early guidebooks to the mysteries of Peru .

While at times the fact and fancy in the pages of Secret of the Andes seem to merge, the first part of the book makes
good reading. According to Williamson, a "Lord Muru" arrived at Lake Titicaca at some time in the remote past, when the Andes Mountains were first uplifted in a cataclysmic event that also sank the Pacific continent
of Mu. Lord Muru set up the "Monastery of the Brotherhood of the Seven
Rays," which was to keep the secrets and treasures of his race in its
archives.

Among these treasures was the Golden Sun Disc of Mu. Williamson
maintains that this Sun Disc was later given to the Incas, when they had
advanced enough spiritually to appreciate it. But when the Spaniards conquered Peru , the Sun
Disc was removed from the Sun Temple at Cuzco , and placed back in
safekeeping at the monastery.

There is still some indication that a tunnel system, and perhaps a
hidden "monastery" does exist in South America .
The legend of the Valley of the Blue Moon is one that has a life beyond Brother
Philip and George Hunt Williamson.

One story told to me by a friend from Indianapolis , Bryan Strohm, also tends to
confirm that there is a secret, underground, "city" in the Andes east of Lake Titicaca .

Bryan came to visit me at the World Explorers Club in Kempton while I was
researching the tunnels and told me of his quest for the Valley of the Blue
Moon some years before. Bryan arrived in Lima and flew to Cuzco to take the train to Puno. From Puno he took a truck to San Juan del Oro, in
the rugged mountains northeast of Lake Titicaca .

He continued past San Juan del Oro by truck to another small village
where he met a school teacher who told him an interesting story of a local
Quechua Indian who had wandered over a high altitude ridge in the mountains
where he saw a small mountain lake with grassy fields leading down to it. It
was a small, hidden valley in the Andes .

The Indian was camping beside this lake when late at night he heard
the sound of chanting. He hid behind a bush, and soon saw a group of men
dressed in white robes. These men came walking down a trail to the lake,
chanting and carrying some kind of lights with them.

Terrified, the man hid behind the bush and then watched as the men
in white robes began to chant around the lake. The water in the small mountain
lake then levitated out of the lake. Astonished, the man then saw steps that
were cut in the solid rock, going down to a pedestals and a platform made out
of stone. There may have been some sort of door going into the earth among
these stone structures. The men in white robes then performed some unknown
ceremony.

The man watched for some time until suddenly he was seen by the
central figure on the pedestal who turned to the hiding man and suddenly raised
his arms into the air and created a storm. A cloud immediately appeared and
began to hail on the man. A bolt of lightning struck nearby.

The Quechua Indian ran from the bushes and, with the hail and
lightning following him, went back down the mountains the way he had come. When
he returned to the villages below he told the strange story to others, and it
was now well known.

Bryan also mentioned that the Valley of the Blue Moon, which appears to
be in a different location from the lake, was said to have a huge pyramid at
the end of it. Bryan spent two weeks hiking on the trails around San Juan del Oro and eventually
came to large but hidden valley which had a gigantic pyramid-shaped mountain at
the end of it.

The pyramid-mountain was distant and obscured by clouds. They
thought that they might reach the area of the pyramid with only a day's walk
after glimpsing the pyramid, but two and a half days later they had still not
reached it. Clouds obscured their view most of time, but occasionally they
would clear for a short time and reveal the pyramid-mountain to them. This
pyramid-mountain, he believed, was the true location of the secret brotherhood
which George Hunt Williamson had described in his books.

Storms and lack of food eventually drove their party back to a small
village near San Juan del Oro. They didn't reach their destination, but Bryan said that they were
all convinced that they had found the Valley of the Blue Moon and that there
was something unusual about it.

There are plenty of people who feel that something unusual is going
on underground, not only in South America , but
in North America , Europe ,
Asia , Africa and around the world. A huge underground tunnel system connecting distant
points on earth is a fascinating possibility. Does it exist? Who will find it?
How far back was it built? Time, shall we say, will tell.

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