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 - Season Finale "Payday"

Late last night (October 2) I received a comment to my last post about Treasure Quest (which now has Snake Island appended to it again). Todo Segalla suggested he had seen the October 5 episode and that, according to him, they had found the treasure. He wrote, “Kevin They found the treasure. I saw the episode that airs Oct. 5, they found the cave… using the drone they located another hill with a cave inside… silver coins, gold bars… it’s flooded and requires expert diving to recover all the treasure. CONGRATS!”

Todo Segalla (I hope)

I don’t know who Todo Segalla is or how reliable this information he has provided is. I do know that in the past, on the treasure hunting shows, we have been teased with big finds that later turn out to be less than spectacular. Remember the old Treasure Quest when they found the Inca sun god icon that they suggested could be worth as much as a quarter of a million dollars, little, silver llamas, and a suggestion that they had found the Treasure of the Trinity… and then nothing.

But the Internet is a wonderful tool and I was able to find something about Todo Segalla, if this is, in fact, the same guy. He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on June 9, 1963. It is suggested that he is a Navy veteran and, of course, was a SEAL… possibly. The Imdb noted that the time of this service is unknown and that he doesn’t talk about it much. He is now a Federal Police Office with the Department of Veteran Affairs. He has abandoned his award-winning acting and his renowned Martial Arts training.

In trying to learn more about this, after looking up Segalla, I blundered into the Discovery Channel website. I noticed that the Friday (Oct 5) episode was available. It was called “Payday.” I clicked on it, of course, and it took me to a list of cable suppliers. Mine was there and I clicked on that. It asked me to sign in but I wasn’t ready to do that but apparently the site checked and the next thing I knew, the episode, commercials and all, was playing on my computer…

So… Spoilers Below…

We started with Jeremy Whalen entering the hole they had made in the tunnel, which is where we had left off the week before. He has apparently fallen and another of the treasure hunters repels down after him. Whalen has lacerated his back, a place on his head, and they start calling for the medic. She arrives, advises that he get out of the tunnel, but Whalen rejects that. She apparently stitches him up, and off they all go.

This is just another proof that this isn’t just four guys in the wilderness hunting for a treasure. There is a large support team with them, so much of the drama is artificial, but at this point I’m not sure that I care.

The medic patches up Whalen, and then the rest of the team and the camera crew and the sound guy join them. It’s probably getting pretty crowded down there. They begin the search, find a big hairy tarantula that worries them greatly, but they get it out of the way to continue the journey.

They realize that there are markings on the wall that suggest the high point of water, which is no longer present. They are walking in mud, which tells them the water was there not long ago… and it’s raining outside meaning that more water might enter the cave.

And, as before, they reach the end of the tunnel. This time, however, they realize that it is an artificial wall that isn’t all that thick. Jack Peters, the demo guy, said that he could surgically remove part of the wall so that they could look beyond it for booby traps and they would be able to see deeper into the tunnel.

He has three sticks of dynamite, det cord and other supplies with him, or so it seems. In fact, they seem to have a lot of equipment in that tunnel that we don’t see until they need to do something more. Just one more proof that we’re watching television rather than an expedition into the wilderness as they keep telling us. But, again, I’m not sure that I care about that anymore.

They successfully take down about half the wall, and beyond it, they see the underground lake. Now they are stymied because they don’t like the look of the water, which might have been there for a long time, filled with bacteria and other toxins which could lead to serious illness. Shawn Cowles wonders about flesh eating bacteria and I have to say, I think he’s got a point.

Whalen, however rigs a way to explore the lake just beyond where they are using the underwater metal detector which I’m not sure they had with them when the climbed into the tunnel. Almost immediately he gets a hit, and the rig a way to scoop the soil from the bottom of the lake. They bring up a Spanish coin and we get a lecture on Pieces of Eight.

They continue in that mode, find I think, another half dozen silver coins, which a massive treasure they do not make. I’m wondering if this was a treasure horde, why are the coins scattered in the dirt. Seems more like coins dropped by accident, but then, why are there so many so close to that wall.

Whalen wants to dive into the lake, but Cowles said, “No.” He’s the expedition leader and won’t allow it. Too dangerous. They work out a compromise and Whalen drops into the freezing water. He walks around and using a Go Pro on a stick, films underwater. He eventually reaches a place where it seems the bottom drops out.

If I have this correctly, they take the boom from the sound guy, and rig a way to measure the depth. Sound guy? Someone else in there with them. The real point however, is that their measurement suggests the bottom is under a hundred feet of water. Given that, given the rain coming down, and given the temperature of the water, they had to abandon the search. They’ve had some success, believe they are on the doorstep, but they just can’t get there.

They go back to their base camp, load their pick-up truck… pick-up truck? Where did that come from? I thought this was such a remote area with no roads. I thought they had to pack in using burros. They do seem to have gotten a number of vehicles into the area based on what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks.

Colibri Hostal, Quime, Bolivia

As the rain comes down and the storm breaks, they head to Quime and the Colibri Hostal (20 bucks a night) where Whalen is reviewing the footage from the Go Pro on his computer. He stops, goes back, enhances, and calls to the others. Excited, they run down the porch (veranda?) looking for Cowles. Whalen shows him what looks to be a gold bar somewhat obscured by the murky water. Oh, don’t get me wrong, what we see there looks just like those ingots pulled up from wrecks of Spanish treasure ships… and there are hints of other bars beneath it.

They have found the treasure. Or so they say. They certainly seem to have done better than the guys at Oak Island. We don’t know because the rainy season drove them from the site, and they need specialized diving equipment to get to the bottom of that lake. It will take weeks, if not months and a pile of cash to arrange for the equipment and the diving expert, though Cowles might be qualified in that arena.

Given what Cowles has said, it seems that this is the end of the line for this season. They won’t be back in the Sacambaya Valley any time soon. They have to arrange for the diving expedition. I confess that I am intrigued by their finds in the tunnel even though they only came out with a few silver coins and underwater pictures of ingots that might be gold. Now we’ll have to wait for next season to learn just what they have found. I hope it turns out better than the last expedition on Treasure Quest where it seemed they were on the verge of a huge discovery only to have the show semi-cancelled, replaced by this version.

Oh, and to Todo Segalla, they didn’t find the treasure. They found evidence suggesting there is something more there, but they didn’t find two billion dollars of stuff. As I say, I’m intrigued, but not convinced yet… of course, this will ensure a second (or is it fourth) season.