Treasure Quest Latest - What a Snooze Fest

Well, Friday’s show (Sept 21) was certainly a snooze fest. I can say that because halfway through I fell asleep and missed some of it. I figured that I’d pick it up on Sunday, but I fell asleep again. Not in the same place but the show still put me to sleep. There just wasn’t anything going on that was all that interesting and I could have been watching the football game.

I did see them reach the end of the tunnel and find nothing there. They did check the walls to make sure there wasn’t a hidden chamber somewhere, but found nothing. I would have though as they used their ground penetrating radar they might have found a hint of that, but no.

From the teasers, I do know they have to find some sort of underground lake, or pond or mud puddle. They hint that they’ll find something of interest hidden in the water, but I’ve been watching this show since they were fooling around on Snake Island. There never is any sort of payoff. Just a hint of something bigger and better coming at some later date. All I have to do is point to the bale seal and say, “But this was supposed to be part of the treasure.”

I did wake up in time to listen to their plan to find out what the symbols on bale seal they had found are. They needed an expert and there was one in La Paz. Well, from the first episode, we were lead to believe that they were in an isolate area of Bolivia, so remote they had to walk in using burros to transport their gear. We have since learned of the secret road that while in crummy shape was still good enough to bring in heavy equipment. And, they had a SUV that apparently can

Quime and the "secret" roads.

make it to Quime in an hour or two.

Now we learn they are only about eight hours from La Paz. I’m wondering if they really camp out in the Sacambaya Valley where there are snakes and scorpions, or if they commute in and out as the shooting schedule requires. They give the impression that they are out there, in the field, day after day, but I think they are only there periodically, so that they can get some footage of them digging around and blowing up things.

Anyway, a couple of the guys head over to talk with a man who is versed in the history of the area and can tell them all about the bale seal. They arrive at his house, which is about the most impressive thing I’ve seen since they started this version of Snake Island. As happens only on TV, they knock on the door and he opens it immediately. That suggests that a meeting had been arranged… which seems likely because they have to get the cameras and sound equipment into the room to film and it would be a real waste of time to show up if the guy was on vacation or out shopping or something.

The expert, whose name I didn’t bother to learn, tells them the bale seal is from the Jesuits, and that the other symbols provide a clue as to where the package was prepared and its destination. There are three wavy lines, which they interpret to mean the Sacambaya Valley where the package was prepared. But, there are three wavy lines in the other spot suggesting the destination. They wonder if that means the Sacambaya Valley where the three rivers meet. They wonder if that means the destination is the same place, but I have to say, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

When the episode ends, not much has happened. Maybe it was in the parts I slept through, but I doubt that. All I really learned was that they are close enough to La Paz, that they could almost commute from Sacambaya to La Paz and back. No reason to rough it in the wild, which, by the way, probably isn’t all that wild.

I will now predict that they will find nothing other than the type of debris you would expect on a site that was occupied for a couple of hundred years. A hundred years ago, an expedition into the area would be been much more difficult than it is today and probably left more debris for them to find. We’ve seen the roads, we’ve seen them bring in heavy equipment, and we have extrapolated that they had a source of electric power. Those a hundred years ago would have had to stay on site because it would have probably taken days to get into the area but today, it is a matter of a couple of hours.

Yes, I’ll follow this to the conclusion but I’m looking forward to Gold Rush. While they aren’t looking for a treasure, they do find lots of gold. Parker and Tony have pulled millions of dollars from the ground without the artificial drama of pretending they are days away from civilization. I just hope Ashley has a bigger role this year (or that she is still around but I guess she’s not there, to quote the Zombies).