Treasure Quest and Cork Graham

Once again, I’m annoyed. Yes, this happens all the time now and this annoyance has to do with Treasure Quest, that once had “Snake Island” appended to it but that is no longer relevant. As happened before when Keith Plaskett left a comment to one of my posts about Treasure Quest, Cork Graham did the same. Like

Keith Plaskett

Plaskett, he was on the first two seasons when they were searching for the Treasure of the Trinity. While my interest was now on the third season and what happened to the fourth, I thought he might be able to shed some light on that.

I found his Facebook page and sent him a message telling him that I hosted a radio show/podcast version of A Different Perspective. I thought he might be interested in appearing to talk about his experiences on Treasure Quest. His response was, “Would love to be on your show.”

In my response to that, I asked a couple of questions, which revolved around the third season. I knew that he hadn’t been seen on camera but thought he might have some insight into why, after the discovery of the Inca artifacts at the end of season two, and the suggestion that they were now close to finding hundreds of millions of dollars, the emphasis of the show switched to the Sacambaya treasure in Bolivia worth a ridiculously estimated two billion dollars. I also mentioned that I had interview Plaskett about Treasure Quest.

His response was, shall we say, less then complementary about his fellow castmates on Treasure Quest. Yes, I said castmates because that seems to be a better term for who they were. It was clear that Graham didn’t like Plaskett or Plaskett’s friend Jeremy Whalen. I did notice that Graham’s book, found on Amazon (of course) had a one-star rating from Plaskett, which isn’t surprising. Graham mentioned he wished he could hear Plaskett’s interview which was easy for me to arrange. I just sent him the link found on this blog. In fact, you can listen to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/16969223

In my email to him, I did say that Plaskett had told me that they didn’t know what was going to happen each day until they got the scripts. Graham wrote back, saying, “Let me make this 100 percent clear: this was a fully scripted show, with 100 percent hired actors, created by Discovery in order to complete against History Channel’s Curse of Oak Island.”

He also wrote, “I’m definitely willing and able to come on your show, but only after you’re squared away with the knowledge I’ve already put out in an attempt to correct all this major FUBARy [fouled up beyond all recognition… and the “F” really stands for another word, but I used the G-ratedT version] sold to audiences around the world…”

I had wondered if the whole Plaskett “flashback to Vietnam,” had been scripted as well. If true, that offended me greatly. Graham wrote, “Plaskett had gone through two bottles of rum by the time we were on set the morning of the shoot that not only led to Plaskett replaying his memories with the 82^nd as a combat engineer in the VN jungles, amplified by the booze…”

Graham suggested that Plaskett was to hold back and suffer from dehydration, but the Vietnam memories that surfaced had nothing to do with what was in the script. You might say that was something of a bonus that provided a better hook

The mission where the silver bar was allegedly
found.

for that episode of the show, which, again is offensive.

For those who remember that, they had allegedly been trekking through the jungle from their boat, heading for this mission where a silver bar had allegedly been found, suggesting it was part of the Treasure of the Trinity. What we all learned was that the mission wasn’t some ruin deep in the jungle, but was a tourist attraction with a paved highway running near it and a town not all that far away that had a Sheridan Resort Hotel. You can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/03/treasure-quest-reality-show.html

Graham then slings a number of other allegations that are serious criminal offenses that I’m not going to repeat here. He told me in the email it was all in his book, so if you are interested in them, you can read the allegations there. He wrote, “Let me know when you’re done with the book and you’ll be more than ready to ask questions that would have been asked of Plaskett, as he was my source on much of this…”

I didn’t like being told what I must do for my show, and his trying to set the rules. I pointed out that the guests normally made copies of their books available to the host. This was the first time that a potential guest had required me to buy the book so that I could be “more than ready to ask questions…” I also pointed out that the appearance on the show provided the author with hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of free advertising for their book and I was surprised that he expected me to buy a book that would, basically, reinforce what I already knew. True, there would be new details and new examples of the staged nature of the show, but then again, Plaskett had told me that and I had reported it.

That was the last I heard from him. He seemed annoyed that I had set the terms for the show, but I made it clear the offer to appear was still viable. After not hearing from him, I sent a short email, again extending the invitation. His response was that work was piling up and thought that the last part of July or first week in August would work.

Well, I understood that our lives sometimes get in the way of doing a radio show or podcast. I try to remain flexible and provide a guest with a number of options. This was a story that I wanted to tell and I was willing to make some accommodations, as long as it was understood that it was my show.

After several weeks, I sent him an email for the last two shows in July or the first one in August. His response? “Thanks for the opportunity to chat with you on your show, Kevin, but at this time I’ve got so much work to do… that I’ll have to pass.”

Here is the take away from all this. I have communicated with two members of the original cast of Treasure Quest and both have been quite clear that the show was scripted. The Discovery Channel held auditions to recruit the cast, that they massaged the situations to build tension (like trashing the boat but not having it stolen and the dehydration of Plaskett for extra  drama), and that they wrote the scripts to provide that tension (sure as the loss of a knapsack with important research papers in it). Their research into the “treasures” was less than complex and when they didn’t have information, they simply made it up. According to Graham and hinted by Plaskett, the producers salted the area so the cast members could keep the narrative going, and when that failed, they changed directions, meaning the new search with a slightly different cast for a different but much more valuable treasure.

I have gone over much of this stuff time and again on this blog. When Plaskett had his melt down in the strip of jungle, we found out that there was more than just the cast traipsing through the jungle. There were cameramen, sound engineers, a doctor, and who knows how many others were with them. In one of the shots of them working on Plaskett, you see several people standing around, not to mention those actually doing something.

You can read about Snake Island and the trouble with the various episodes with the problems here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/12/treasure-quest-season-four.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/08/treasure-quest-end-of-season-two-recap.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/10/treasure-quest-season-finale-payday.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/09/treasure-quest-latest-what-snooze-fest.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/09/treasure-quest-and-secret-road.html

I could go on, but just type Treasure Quest or Sacambaya Treasure into the search engine found on the left side of the blog and you can read the various postings about the show over all the seasons.

As I pointed out as they began season three in Bolivia, they weren’t very clever about hiding the truth. We’re told they had to use burros to pack into the area where the Sacambaya treasure was hidden. But their whole research was based on a story told in a travel guide written a hundred years ago. There simply is no evidence that the treasure ever existed. You can read about this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/08/treasure-quest-season-three.html

But the real point is that later in season three we learn that after a stroll of thirteen hours they arrived at a small town. And then they drive back to their search area in a truck, and they take an excavator with them. Did no one at Discovery think that we’d put it all together to realize they could have, and probably did, drive to the search area in the very beginning and that the trek with burros was for the drama. Bogus from the word “Go”.

While I think Cork Graham would have made an interesting show, and although he agreed, with enthusiasm to appear, he bowed out when he learned that I wasn’t going to cave to his demands. I’d run the show and he, as the guest, would not. I wish we could have done it, but as they say, “These things happen.”

Treasure Quest - Season Four?

In the last few weeks, I have been asked about the new season of Treasure Quest: Once Upon a Time on Snake Island. As everyone knows, the first two seasons dealt with the Treasure of Trinity but has been moved from Snake Island and eastern South America to Bolivia and the Sacambaya Treasure. The Sacambaya Treasure is said to be three times as large as the Treasure of the Trinity.

For those who have been keeping score at home, the last season ended with those involved believing they had found a stash of gold bars in about four feet of water. You would think, if they had that sort of evidence and had been that close, they would have been back the next season, ready to recover that treasure rather than

The hotel near the site of the Sacambaya treasure.

telling the world exactly where it was. Wouldn’t that inspire someone, somewhere to attempt to sneak in there to grab some of the gold before Treasure Quest hunters returned. Contrary to what they claimed at the beginning of season 3, you could actually drive to that location. Unless there were guards in place at the site, I can’t see why someone else wouldn’t try to get in there first. Might be dangerous but those gold bars aren’t hidden in deep water and we do know the location… if they are actually there as claimed.

And what about the Bolivian government? Wouldn’t they have a claim to any treasure found inside the borders of their country? I haven’t even mentioned the church which might believe the treasure was theirs because it was mined by their priests. Or it belongs to the natives forced into slavery to mine the treasure. Wouldn’t their descendants have a real claim on the treasure? But I digress…

Overlooking all the historical and legal issues here, I would think that had a treasure been found, there would have been big news about it. We’d already have the answer, not to mention all the free advertising for the show. Who wouldn’t want to watch these guys grab billions in gold?

Here’s what I can find about the program…

It is produced by MAR Pictures for the Discovery. Their website provides a list of all the programs that they produce. The page for Treasure Quest is no longer there and seems to have been deleted. But then, I couldn’t get any of the other pages to load either which either means there is a problem on the site, or MAR Pictures is having trouble with the programs they produce.

On Discovery, there is a promo for season 3, which aired last year (2018). There seems to be no update on that. You can, if you wish, watch episodes there. And, it is implied that you can also watch them on Amazon Prime, but I haven’t bothered

Cappy Plaskett, who was in the first two seasons
but didn't make the cut for the third.

to look.

According to some sources, the show is popular enough for a new season, but you have to wonder if the production costs haven’t outstripped any other financial benefit. In other words, it costs more to produce than any revenue recovered… unless, of course, they found the treasure and get to keep some of it.

The new season is supposed to begin in March 2020, but I can find no corroboration for that start date. There is even some speculation that they won’t be after the Sacambaya treasure but on another “Quest.” If that’s true, then we have learned all we need to know about this whole series.

Let’s not forget what Cappy Plaskett told us about auditions and scripts and internal strife. This reality show isn’t about reality, but sort of an adventure series like King Solomon’s Mines, which was a good movie but not a reality TV show. We have the same thing here. Two versions of the show about adventurers searching for a lost treasure. It’s interesting, it’s fun, but it is also just a show.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Keith Plaskett (Treasure Quest - Snake Island)

For this Special Edition of A Different Perspective, I spoke with Captain Keith Plaskett of Treasure Quest – Snake Island fame. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/16969223

One of the important aspects of this was that I have had a chance to review both his DD 214, which confirms his military service and a number of his Master’s Certificates which allow him to captain various sizes of vessels in various oceans

Captain Keith Plaskett

around the world. I have seen nothing that would suggest that he has misrepresented anything I saw in his published biographies or that he said about himself on the Treasure Quest program.

For those of you who are interested in the program and how it was put together, I think you’ll find some interesting answers if you listen carefully. He did suggest there might have been more of a scripted nature to the show than was seen on television. And, I had wondered just how much time they had spent in the jungle trekking to the old mission, Reduccion de Neustra Senora de Santa Ana (and sorry to my Latin friends for the horrible pronunciation of the mission’s name) in Argentina that we saw with a paved highway near it and a town large enough to have a Sheridan Luxury Resort in it. He made it clear that they hadn’t stayed at the Sheridan, but it wasn’t as if they were living in the jungle either.

I was also interested in learning why, if they had found an Inca icon that could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in their last episode of Season 2, they never returned to that area. Although the narrator told us of the value, apparently those who had found it didn’t see it as being that valuable.

There are some real nuggets about Treasure Quest – Snake Island in the conversation, but you need to pay attention… and yes, I used the term nuggets on purpose. This was quite revealing.

Next up, if things work out, I’ll be talking with David O’Leary, creator of Project Blue Book and one of the executive producers of the show. I think those who list will be surprised by O’Leary.

Chasing More Footnotes

I have complained in the past that I am becoming less than thrilled with the UFO community. The reasons for this are varied but come down to a couple of basic ideas. One of those is that no matter how often a case is proven to be a hoax, a misidentification, a misinterpretation, or an inability to recognize the mundane, there are those who will argue the point forever. A recent post was partially inspired by this. How many times do we have to delve into the Oliver Lerch tale when everything that can be found points to an invention of the tale rather than a real event?

The point here, however, is that part of the problem is that some people who claim to be researchers or investigators just don’t follow the path to its end. This is what lead to the chasing of footnotes because sometimes the footnote is simply inadequate. Sometimes the information is not complete.

Not to pick on Richard Dolan, but just the other day as I was looking for something else, I noticed a couple of problems. These sorts of things are not restricted to Richard because we all have

Richard Dolan. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle

fallen into the trap. On page 16 of his UFOs and the National Security State, he reported on a sighting by railroad engineer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who saw ten shiny disks on June 23. His footnote leads us to a number of sources, which cover a number of sightings in that same paragraph. Unfortunately, the information about the Cedar Rapids sighting is wrong, as I have noted in an earlier posting. The report was not made until after the Arnold sighting, was apparently for the afternoon of June 24 rather than the 23, and the railroad man was not in Iowa, but in Joliet, Illinois. Among those who reported this information as Dolan had, were Dick Hall and Frank Edwards. I believe Hall got it from Edwards, who must have seen something in the Cedar Rapids Gazette about the sighting a couple of days after Arnold. Edwards, or those others, had not followed the story to the source, or they would have found the discrepancies.

As I say, not to pick on Dolan, but later, on page 25, he wrote about Bill Brazel and the finding of the metal debris from the Roswell crash. The footnote takes us to Stan Friedman’s Crash at Corona in which he quotes from an interview with Bill Brazel. The quotes are accurate, for the most part, but there is no footnote to explain how the information was gathered because Friedman supplies no information about that. The trail ends there.

However, I know how that interview was conducted because I had

Stan Friedman. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle

arranged it, and Don Schmitt and I were there. I recorded it. The more accurate footnote would have taken us not to Friedman’s book, but to UFO Crash at Roswell, where the footnote explained the circumstances of the interview. In other words, the original source was that interview that Don and I conducted and not the information printed in Friedman’s book.

A side problem with this is that Friedman altered one portion of the interview without justification. Those who follow Dolan’s footnote to Friedman will get the inaccurate information… Friedman inserted the word “black” into the interview to describe one the sergeants who came to the Brazel ranch to collect the bits of debris Bill had found. Brazel made no reference to the racial identity of those four men but Friedman inserted the word to bolster the Gerald Anderson fairy tale. You can read the whole story here (if you are so inclined):

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008/09/black-sergeants-and-stan-friedman.html

This problem is not confined to UFO research. I was looking for information for a post on the new version of the Treasure Quest show and found a couple of sites that provided what seemed to be accurate information. Reference was made to someone named C. H. Prodgers and in this day of the Internet, I thought I would find out what he had said about the treasure.

Twenty-five years ago, I couldn’t have gathered the information. True, one of the articles referred to Prodgers, but in the world today, I was able to find a copy of Prodgers’s book online. I didn’t have to rely on what others had written about it. I could read it for myself. And, I found that much of the information published, that referenced Prodgers, was incorrect. After all, they were quoting Prodgers as the source, but what Prodgers had written did not match what they were reporting. Could Prodgers have been making up the tale of the treasure? Sure. But that didn’t matter because he was the original source. He was writing from the point of view of having been there, lived the adventure, and there wasn’t much documentation that preceded him. The others were quoting him as their source.

That is, I chased the references to the ultimate source. I corrected the errors made by others who had used the same source, and came away unimpressed with the information. It reads more like fiction than fact and there really is nothing to back up the story. And now that the first season is over, we have seen a large number of problems with this treasure hunting quest.

So, now you’re wondering how all this relates to Ufology. It is about getting to the original source. In the past, the only way to do it was go to the location or find a library that had the proper resources in its collections. You had to read the microfilms and search endlessly for the articles. That is what I had done with the Cedar Rapids story. I could search the microfilm of the Cedar Rapids Gazette and I found the original article about the railroad man and his UFOs. Took about an hour. Had I lived elsewhere, I might not have found it… until I could make an Internet search.

Here’s another example. As I point out in another post, Don Keyhoe, in writing about the 1948 Mantell case, got some bad information and therefore some of his conclusions wrong. He didn’t have access to the documents available to us online today. He assumed that the timing of the events fit into a specific sequence. He assumed that the times given in various reports was when the object was seen over that specific town. What this means that the sighting of the object from Madisonville, Kentucky, wasn’t of an object overhead as Keyhoe believed, but of one to the northwest. The claim that the object was over the Godman Army Airfield tower as Keyhoe believed, is not true. The documents in the Blue Book files proved that the men in the tower saw the UFO somewhere to the southwest at the very limits of human ability to see it. Given those two facts, Keyhoe’s estimate of the speed was way off. That’s not Keyhoe’s fault. He was relying on information that had been reported to him orally rather than seeing what the documents said. He couldn’t have reviewed those documents easily until 1976.

Those who cite Keyhoe’s estimate of the speed have not followed up on the information which was published in the early 1950s. Had they done so, they would have realized that his claim the object was moving at 180 miles an hour was badly flawed. Information available today gives us a much clearer picture. This isn’t to fault Keyhoe because he was relying on the information he had, but to fault those who haven’t bothered to update the information when they began their research.

What all this means is that in the world today, we can look much deeper into the past. We have access to nearly all human knowledge through the Internet. We can study newspaper files in cities hundreds or thousands of miles away (though some services require a subscription). The files of Project Blue Book are on line for all to review… and there are other sources of information about Blue Book that we have today that Keyhoe and others in the 1950s and 1960s didn’t have.

There is then, no real excuse for continuing to report information that is out of date or inaccurate. We can clear up these things by taking our research to the next level, which has always been the real point of chasing footnotes. This isn’t about “gotcha” but about cleaning up the information so that we can come to the proper conclusion. It isn’t about making someone look bad, but about searching for the answers to the mystery, whatever that mystery might be.

While I find chasing footnotes to be fun, I guess there are those who can’t be bothered with following the trail. They already know the truth so there is no need to search any further for it. Why clutter up a good UFO report with a lot of facts that provide us with an identification? Sometimes, however, we do learn something important about a case, which is why I do what I do. I just wish that there wasn’t a constant fight inside Ufology, protecting the sacred cows, when the facts take us somewhere else. 

I can cite examples here. Tales that are told and retold by those who are enthusiastic about their favorite cases. They ignore facts that don’t fit into their view of the world. They know the “truth,” and the facts be damned.

The airship crash in Aurora, Texas, in 1897 proves the point. The evidence and documentation shows that the story was invented by a stringer for a Dallas newspaper. Other documentation, in the form of histories of Aurora or Wise County where Aurora is located, that were published within a couple of years of the alleged crash mention nothing about it. Had such an event taken place, even if it didn’t involve a craft from another world, these histories would have contained some information about it. There is none. But we still have to listen to tales of the Aurora, Texas, UFO crash and put up with television documentaries in which they are digging “for the truth.” Of course, when they’re done, they have not advanced our knowledge. They have just added another level of nonsense to the tale.

Treasure Quest - A Few Final Thoughts

Just a couple of things to clear up after the season finale of Treasure Quest. Just a couple of questions that I have about the show, or a couple of comments about what we saw.

First, if I understood it right, one of them mentioned they had spent two months in the wrong place. They had talked to the last man living who had actually looked for the treasure and he told them that he thought it was on the site of the old Jesuit mission. In that first episode, after they had traveled over the Death Highway, trekked in with burros, and made a big deal about how isolated the place was, they apparently found a silver goblet buried among the ruins. Interesting, suggestive of something more to be found, but in and of itself, irrelevant.

That didn’t stop them from crawling all over the area, finding tunnels and caves, and calling in heavy equipment from the “secret” road to Quime. That also told us that they could have driven in, from Quime, in a couple of hours. We didn’t need all the additional drama, but what is a treasure hunting show without some artificial drama.

C. H. Prodgers

Anyway, had they bothered to do any basic research, they surely would have come across C.H. Prodgers’ book telling of his adventures in the area about a hundred years ago. Prodgers made it clear that the treasure was hidden under a huge, egg-shaped rock that he had blown up. Fifteen feet or so under it, he found the roof of the cavern or tunnel that held the treasure. I mean, he told the world where it was and these guys spent two months in the wrong place. Even I, sitting at home with a computer hooked to the Internet, took nearly ten minutes to find Prodgers’ book and then find the relevant chapters. After all this, our treasure hunting crew found the tunnel that Prodgers had described. They could have saved two months time and been able to reach deeper into that underground lake.

Second, are the Spanish coins they found. These were silver, according to Shawn Cowles, and I have no reason to doubt his conclusion. What I did wonder about is why they were in such pristine condition. After they pulled them up, out of the mud in the underground lake, I thought they should show some signs of being under water and stuck in mud for hundreds of years. It seemed to me that he just wiped the mud away and there was a nice, shiny Piece of Eight looking as if he had pulled it out of his pocket.

I did try to find some information about silver buried in the ground. I learned that as a base metal, it doesn’t react to the chemicals in the soil the way other metals, such as tin does. Silver doesn’t rust. It does, however, tarnish, just as the goblet they had found earlier had tarnished. So, I wondered if a silver coin buried in the

Spanish Piece of Eight

mud, under, what, four feet of water (at least four feet at the time they found it) would react with the soil. Would the water protect the coins from the ravages of sitting around in the open air? We all know that silver, just sitting in a cupboard does tarnish. What about coins? What about Spanish coins? What about coins under water? And were they under water for the last three or four hundred years or had the lake receded or died up periodically in that time?

I confess that I can’t answer most of these questions, but they do make me wonder. And, I will say that it seems that silver doesn’t deteriorate as quickly as other metals do. That means that wiping the mud off them might have revealed silver coins that looked as good as these do. I just don’t know the answer.

To end this, I am intrigued by the images recovered using the Go Pro. What it seemed to show were bars of metal which they identified as gold, sitting in the water near the abyss they found. There seemed to be several of them. What we don’t know is if these are all the bars in that tunnel or are there more, maybe at the bottom of the deep hole they found. I do wonder why Prodgers or any of the other expeditions didn’t find more of the treasure… Or, did they? Maybe what the new team found was a few of the items dropped by those carrying the real find out of the tunnel long ago. Maybe the treasure was there and all that is left are just a few bits that were deemed unimportant.

That does make for an interesting ending to the season. We’ll just have to wait to find out what is at the bottom of that lake. Unless, of course, the show is cancelled.

Treasure Quest and the Bat Cave

Well folks, last night (September 28) was maybe the worst of the episodes but only for what it revealed about the great treasure hunt. They penetrated another tunnel, or in this case a cave, filled with toxic chemicals thanks to the vampire bats, and found nothing. They reached the dead end, avoiding the bats by shining their lights down so as not to disturb them. Oh, and they created a huge air vent to blow the toxic gas out using some of the one hundred plastic bags they had brought in. Really? A hundred plastic bags?

All that really proves was that they had access to a great deal of equipment and supplies that, again, suggested, they weren’t traveling into the deep wilderness without a lot of support. If they were trekking into this remote area, I can’t think of a good reason to bring in all those plastic bags because they would have limited weight capabilities on those burros they allegedly used… but, of course, we know that isn’t true. They’re an hour or so from Quime and what, ten hours from La Paz

C. H. Prodgers

by those SUVs that have become more prevalent in the last few episodes. I note here that C. H. Prodgers, who was there a hundred years ago, wrote that the trip to La Paz would take eight to ten days. I bring this up only for perspective.

Did I mention they found a bell? It had a couple of cracks in it and was made of bronze which is not a treasure but was cool. And, they found more of that oxen chain. All that led them, indirectly, to the Bat Cave, which turned out to be a bust.

So, they’re standing there, wondering what to do next because Winter is Coming… I mean, the rainy season is coming, so they don’t have much time. They deploy a drone, which is another bit of technology that requires some kind of external support such as batteries and recharging capabilities. With it they find another area several miles away that has three rivers coming together and with a mesa close by. They decide they must get to that area because that also fits the descriptions of the Roman Document.

After a hike, they walk into the area, climb the hill and look for the egg-shaped rock that is supposed to mark the location of the tunnel of treasure. It was so big it took 500 of the locals to place on top of the hill. Prodgers had written nearly a hundred years ago that, “If you dig down underneath this stone for five yards, you will find the roof of a large cave, which took 500 men two and a half years to hollow out. The roof is seventy yards long, and there are two compartments and a long narrow passage leading from the room on the east side to the main entrance two hundred yards away.”

Prodgers continued his commentary, “The stone was exactly ten feet high above the ground, five feet below, and fourteen feet wide around the middle.”

One of our guys talked about the huge stone and they all begin a search for the rock but don’t find it. Instead they discover a boulder that has smaller rocks scattered around it. They postulate that this might have been the egg-shaped rock that weather had shattered. Prodgers, however, wrote, “I started off the excavation by blowing the big egg-shaped stone to pieces with dynamite.” That certainly would have done a better job of breaking the boulder apart.

You would think that this latest expedition, that has been talking about all its technology would have, at the very least, searched out some of these old records and stories before heading to Bolivia. You would think that they would have known that Prodgers blew up the rock so that it wouldn’t be there. I knew it. I learned about it weeks ago and didn’t even have to visit a library to learn it.

While our guys are looking around, they find a huge void underground using their ground penetrating radar and a couple of other gadgets, and I wonder where all that equipment came from because it sure didn’t look as if they had lugged it into the wild during the latest trek. Their packs were somewhat smaller so that equipment should have been visible. But never mind.

After working their way around the rock and plateau, they find a void, but Prodgers told us where it was. He wrote, nearly a century ago, “The roof of the cave was covered over by earth and grass for eighteen inches or two feet, except at the end where the big stone was, where it was covered rather deeper.”

Our guys determine it is even deeper than that. They’re going to need their excavator and wonder if they can get it up there. (Sure, I know the sentence has some syntax problems but I wanted to get all forms of there in it.) While a couple of them set up base camp, with more stuff that they hadn’t seemed to carry in with them, the others head back to the original and obviously wrong site. They crank up

Josh Gates. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle

the excavator and one of those ubiquitous SUVs for the drive back… Yeah, they can actually drive to the new location and you have to wonder if they didn’t know that all the time. You wonder if they drove over, climbed out then waded around in the river to make it look good on television because what sort of expedition drives to its new, important location, other than Josh Gates and his pals? Certainly not those guys on Treasure Quest.

They drive the excavator up the hill, position it to dig down and wonder if it has the capability to dig as deep as they need… But, of course it does, and they breakthrough into the cavern. I will point out here the Prodgers had done that a hundred years ago. He described the cavern but he didn’t describe any treasure found in it. Prodgers, by the way, never found the treasure, as I noted in an earlier post, but he seems to have been at this very location a hundred years before our guys arrived.

They do break into the tunnel or cave, and they try to test the air. Prodgers had suggested that it was toxic. One of the men begins a descent into the hole they opened, mentioning that it looks deep. He keeps going but stops responding to them. As they panic, they realize the line is now slack and call for a medic that we’ve never seen but who was obviously there with a cameraman or two.  Before this is resolved, we cut away for commercials. When we come back it is obvious that we’ll have to wait until next week to find out if the man survived and if they have found the treasure. I’ll say “Yes and no.” Yes, he survives and no, they’ll find no treasure.

Treasure Quest - The Bolivian Brown and a Bale Seal

Well, another episode and another major disappointment. However, it did get me thinking about the production of the show rather than what was happening on my TV screen.

What do you mean, you might ask?

Remember that we were treated to that harrowing ride on the Highway of Death, the trek with a number of burros, the just missed landslide, and all the other obstacles they had to defeat just to reach the Sacambaya Valley where the treasure is allegedly hidden. I wonder just how many people made the trek, how much equipment they had brought in with them, and how much food and other supplies they had. Certainly, way too much for the short burro train we saw.

Since we have seen all four of the treasure hunters on screen at the same time, there is obviously a cameraman somewhere around. The shots change suggesting a cameraman. There might be two because the team is sometimes split. Once, some of them went to Quime, and others stayed behind digging around, suggesting two cameramen.

Larry King Live! in the desert near Rachel, Nevada. While this was a live show, the point is that there are many
support people and lots of equipment required. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

The number isn’t all that important. What is important is the myth that they’re in some remote area which is nearly impossible to reach. They had trekked in, mainly on foot. But we now see there are more than just the treasure hunters. We have the support team for a television production and that implies a source of resupply that does not rely on burros.

Larry King Live! outside Rachel, Nevada. More of the
support staff for the show and the panel of interview
guests. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

Of course, we now know that there is a road, a crummy road but a road, from Quime into the Sacambaya Valley. Say what you will about the road, they did manage to get an 18-wheeler over that road, carrying an excavator on its trailer. It might not have been easy, but they did it. And, importantly, the big truck was led by an SUV, which could have made the drive without any real problems. By itself, the SUV might have been able to make the trip in less than an hour.

Which brings us back to the latest episode. They begin their assault on the tunnel they relocated with their ground penetrating radar, but the heavy excavator, using a jackhammer tip, created such vibrations that rocks began tumbling from high above them. Realizing that this could be a problem, they decided to blow off the dangerous sections of the rock formations, attempting to direct the blast so that the rocks fell on the other side of the ridge. While I have no problems with that, this is just another example of all the materiel they brought with them… and remember the makeshift explosives that they had to create in an earlier episode. Why didn’t they use these real explosives then? And, if they didn’t have them then, where did they come from now?

They do break through into the tunnel. They find an old ore cart, something that would have been used in the mining operation. It is, of course, in lousy shape, but it is an interesting artifact. Near it, they find a bit of ornate cloth, that had been interwoven with gold. It is an interesting scrap but only proves that the Jesuits had been there at one time. We already knew that.

Outside, one of the team is worried about the weight of the heavy equipment crushing the tunnel, so he orders it moved back, away from the new entrance they made. While the excavator starts right up, the backhoe doesn’t. The battery is nearly dead. But never to worry, one of the team tells them they’ll just have to slow roast it.

Yup. That’s what he said. So, while the others take the battery out, he builds a fire. He tells us that heat will stimulate the molecules in the battery and that might be enough to get the backhoe’s engine to crank. Sure, it’s dangerous, and rather than stand back, out of the way in case the battery explodes, he stands right next to it as if he has to turn it on a spit, like, well, a roast.

The plan works without a catastrophic explosion. They replace the battery, while being urged to hurry, while it’s still warm… as if it’s going to cool off in that topical environment. Of course, the plan works, because, well, this is Treasure Quest.

Meanwhile, back in the tunnel, the rest of the team continues their search for treasure. No, they don’t fine it but do, eventually, find a skeleton with a massive wound in the skull. The blow could have been the result of any of a number of things, including trauma sustained long after death. Interestingly, they wrap the bones in a shroud and do bury it outside the tunnel showing respect for those who had been there before them. They mark the grave with a cross… and I’ll let it go at that.

Finished with the big finds, for a moment, we are now shown the tents they have been staying in at night, or so we’re led to believe. To the horror of the team, a Bolivian Brown Scorpion has invaded one tent so we have the drama of the others trying to capture the scorpion before it stings the victim. They catch it in a boot and one man puts his hand over the top to keep the scorpion from getting out. I’m thinking that is a good way to get stung, but then, they were messing around with that snake found in their camp in an earlier episode. Nothing like a little brush with danger to keep the drama high.

I did learn that the deadliest scorpion in South America is the Brazilian Yellow. Although it is claimed it rarely delivers a fatal dose, Brazilian health officials suggest one person killed every other day. The Bolivian Brown made no list I could find as the most dangerous, but then any scorpion sting can have major consequences. But I digress.

And they find a coin, or what looked like a coin. They have been teasing us with this find for weeks. We’ve seen it a dozen times, but now we learn it really isn’t a coin, but some sort of lead marker or bale seal for what would have bundles or boxes of real treasure, or so we’re told. It tells the recipient that the package had not been opened somewhere along the journey.  

Since the number on it is 136 (I think, it was one hundred thirty something) that suggests a large number of these bundles, packages, boxes having been created. While they tell us that this proves there is a treasure somewhere around, it doesn’t mean any such thing. The bale seal could have been on any number of different things shipped out of there or even into there depending on the circumstances. Regardless of what they say, it doesn’t mean that the treasure is still hidden nearby, only that gold and/or silver may had been collected there at one time or another. Or maybe I should say something had been collected there for shipment at one time.

We’ve reached the end of the story for the moment. They have found, a bit of ornate cloth interwoven with gold, an old mining cart, a skeleton, a Bolivian Brown Scorpion, and a bale seal. As with all these other treasure hunting shows, we’re seeing a lot of the debris of human habitation, but we’re seeing nothing to tell us that there is two BILLION dollars worth of gold around the Sacambaya Valley. We only know that Jesuits were there a couple of hundred years ago, that they did mine the area, and that they are long gone. Interesting, from an anthropological point of view, but nothing that tells us that there is any treasure hidden around there.

Treasure Quest and the Secret Road

I have come to believe that the producers of Treasure Quest believe that we all are pretty dumb. The last two episodes prove that point. First, we have the great snake fight as they try to chase away a rather large snake that was annoying the burros. I’m just not sure of the wisdom of messing with something like that. I don’t know what kind of snake it was, but I do know there are some very deadly snakes in the area and a bite would prove fatal unless they could get to the hospital quickly.

Yes, that’s my take away from that episode. About the only other thing they did was discover a tunnel and managed to break through the top. They explored it quickly but found little. C. H. Prodgers, who was one of the first to search for the treasure at the turn of the last century had found tunnels as well. Seems like the Jesuits, who built the mission and who were responsible for mining in the area, built lots of tunnels and mine shafts. Finding one was not of great importance.

The episode was a sort of “let’s get this show on the road” type thing, setting up those episodes that would follow. Just enough to hold our interest (well, almost) and get us to come back to see if anything exciting happens next.

It was in episode three where I think the whole thing comes off the rails. It demonstrates that there is a lot of imagination going on and I’m not sure we can call this a reality show anymore. There was obviously research that had been conducted by the production staff about this area before anyone arrived and there was a long list of necessary equipment created.

Here’s what I mean. They have metal detectors. They have ground penetrating radar. They have another device that allows them to look below the surface and has been instrumental in them locating and following one of these tunnels which is different from the ground penetrating radar. I have to ask, “How do they power all these electronic devices?”

Sure, they brought in batteries, but how do they recharge them? They need a source of electricity, and if there is wiring for electricity into the area, then it is not as remote as they suggest. And if there isn’t, then they had to bring in something to create the electricity to recharge all those batteries which suggests that the area is not as remote as they suggest.

Taking this a step further, and I’ve mention this before, what about all the camera and sound equipment? In this last episode we watch as they take apart one of the drones, attach the parts of it to another piece of equipment that is used by the camera crew and make some sort of remote control rover. Now, attaching a camera to it, they can explore the tunnel they found that was almost completely blocked by a cave-in. They just allow the rover to drive through the small opening at the top of the debris, and now they can look at the other side of the tunnel. But what that really tells us is that they have a lot of stuff that we haven’t seen and I wonder where it all came from.

They begin to dig another access point beyond the cave in, found by using that fancy equipment. They’re digging with picks and shovels, and since this is a treasure hunt, you’d expect them to bring that sort of thing in with them. But, you must remember that these tools are heavy and apparently, they didn’t have all that many burros on their long trek into the Sacambaya Valley, which suggests the journey was more drama than necessity.

They realize that digging another hole to get into the tunnel is nearly impossible because the ground is too hard or too rocky. They’re going to need something heavier. We learn now that there is a mining town not all that far away. They can walk to it in a matter of hours, okay, twelve or thirteen hours, to see if there is any heavy equipment available to rent, all the while assuming there will be a way to get that stuff back to the valley. I mean you can rent all the excavators you want but if there is no road, then the excavator will be useless.

A 3D view of Quime and the roads leading in and out.

To me this idea of heavy equipment and a road is an incredible piece of information and deduction. According to what we have been told before, or shown before, the Sacambaya Valley is nearly impossible to reach. They had to walk in with burros carrying everything they would need such as food. How big is that crew anyway? We do see a cameraman so we learn that not only the on-air “talent” is there, but something of a support staff as well… But I digress.

They make the trek, find the town, and find a company that is willing to rent them some heavy equipment such as an excavator and a back hoe. First, of course, they must get a blessing from a local shaman. I find this interesting from an anthropological point of view, but it does nothing to really advance the story. Just what Hollywood used to call “Oat meal.” That is, something put into a story to stretch it out. Filler.

They manage to rent the equipment (why am I not surprised), and, one of the locals knows of a “secret” road that leads back, into the

Downtown Quime.

Sacambaya Valley. Really? There is a road into the area? And since they’re in a town, there are roads leading to it as well so the journey over the Highway of Death and then with the burros down into the valley could have been avoided if they all had been smart enough to check out the surrounding area. Someone surely had to know what was going on. You just don’t assume that you’ll be able to get to the town, rent the equipment you need, and that there will be a road to take them back into the valley. This does, sort of, wreck my helicopter theory but it also smacks of a script.

Anyway, they rent the equipment and head out, but no, there is another obstacle. Part of the road has been washed out. They get their SUV beyond it, but the tractor-trailer carrying the excavator is too big and too heavy to make it across. BUT WAIT, one of the local men has a friend who can bring them some logs to bridge the gap. Sure, he can get there quickly, but it will cost them. Sure, he does get there quickly.

And yes, they bridge the gap, get the equipment across just as part of the bridge falls away. Does anyone else see this as just another part of the script to enhance the drama?

To recap briefly. They entered the area unaware of the mining community only a long walk from the Sacambaya Valley. They are unaware of the road that leads from that community to where they are working. According to them, they didn’t see the road on any map, but I wonder if they have ever heard of Google Earth.

We know they trekked over to Quime, which isn’t all that isolated. There are roads on the aerial views that lead in and out of town. These are unnamed roads, which might not appear on any maps, but do show up on Google Earth. Did the producers not search the area using the Internet? Had they never heard of Google Earth? Wouldn’t this explain where the burros came from in the first place?

One of the hotel rooms available in Quime.

There are two hotels, at least, in Quime, and neither are very expensive. While the walk to them might take ten or twelve hours, I’m thinking that it would be worth the effort for a couple of days of living inside where there would be hot water, better food, and probably Internet access. And they wouldn’t have to worry about snakes joining them in their sleeping bags, something else they would have had to bring in on the backs of those poor, tiny burros.

Here’s the point. We are lead to believe that these guys trekked in, avoiding danger, dodging landslides and snakes and other hazards. But the equipment they have suggests something else. There is no visible support for the technology, but it still works. There is no electricity but the batteries never run down. They have all the food they need and while I’m not sure about the river water as a source of potable water, there certainly are ways to purify it.

But the point that leaves me cold was the location of the town with mining equipment and a road that leads back to the Sacambaya Valley. They say that it wasn’t on the maps which might be true, but it is on Google Earth and I don’t believe that they headed into the area without knowing about it. I find that a little dishonest but then, the isolation and the invented danger certainly makes for better television. I’d hate to think they were spending their nights in a hotel in Quime, and using their SUV to get to the valley to shoot the adventure when the production schedule called for it.

So, here’s my prediction. They will find little bits and pieces of old coins and other artifacts, but they’ll just not be able to get to the big stash. In the end, they’ll just fade away as those looking for the Treasure of the Trinity faded away after it seemed they were onto something. This is just an adventure show that is pretending to be reality, but it is nothing more than a scripted adventure created for entertainment.