About Benoit

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.

Benoit Duverneuil is an adventurer, blogger & web entrepreneur, author & film maker.

Benoit’s quest for adventure began with a good dose of frustration. He was born in Limoges, a small city founded by the Romans around 10BC, somewhere in the middle of France. Back then, no international airport and Paris was at more than 3 hours travel by train. His geographic isolation and appetite for travelling were compensated by a strong addiction for adventure fictions, books, movies, and video games. Authors such as Rudyard Kipling, T.E. Lawrence, Lord Byron, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Daniel Defoe, H. Rider Haggard… Animes and movies such as The Mysterious Cities of Gold, Indiana Jones, Alan Quatermain, Seven Years in Tibet were the pillars of his imagination.  At the age of 13, during a field trip in Spain, he escapes from the group and goes alone, exploring the streets of Madrid. At the age of 22, he joins a humanitarian convoy and works with refugees camps in Bosnia, at the end of the war. A year later, he embarks on a cinematographic journey in South East Asia,  filming non-profit organizations working with street children. He is very involved in the local cultural life and manage two non-profit organizations dedicated to filmmaking.

Since graduating, Benoit has traveled all over the world. At the beginning of his career, he worked with social and humanitarian non-profit organizations and participated in projects aiming at small communities, essentially located in West Africa. Then, he brought the rest of the world to Limoges, by creating the first International Webdesign Festival, a conference where young designers had to deliver a unique interactive creation within 24 hours.

Benoit is also a serial web entrepreneur and combines Internet technology to his travelling experience as much as possible. At age 21, he started his first company, a pure dot com venture, specialized in fair trade business. Then, he worked for a regional governmental agency, helping local web companies to expand their business, and initiating a unique technology cluster dedicated to web design and human-machine interfaces. He also worked as an Internet Business Development consultant for clients located in the USA, Europe, Russia, and China.

Benoit has Master in Internet & Business Development, and he is also graduated in Culture & Business Administration. He also studied History, Geography, Archaeology, and Geographic Information Systems at the University. He has a real passion for Pre-Columbian civilizations, and other periods of History.

In 2006, Benoit moved to Miami, Florida where he manages multiple Internet startups and a global technology company. He also provides Web Analytics services to fortune 500 companies and to several eCommerce giants. The rest of the time, we can find him racing a snowmobile in the Arctic Circle, diving in the Caribbean sea looking for old Spanish galions, or exploring Peruvian ruins in a remote area. Both spontaneous and unpredictable, this attitude has shaped his life so far, given him some of his unique stories and his incredibly eclectic group of friends.
Benoit is also a member of the Peruvian Explorers Club.

Membership card Benoit Duverneuil Explorers Club

Since 2008, he organizes expeditions in both Peru and Ecuador, searching for clues about the amazing story of Atahualpa’s tomb. In 2011, suffuring from altitude sickness he nearly passed away in the Peruvian Andes in the region of Cusco. After a year of transition and with the help of a new team, he launched a serie of new expeditions in Ecuador and in the Llanganates area.

Benoit Duverneuil during his 2013 expedition in the Llanganates

LOSTINCAGOLD.com is the culmination of his +20 years long dream to take part in one of the greatest history challenges, trying to debunk one of the toughest mystery, leading expeditions in the most remote area of the planet, raising money for a worthy cause and entertain people along the way. Benoit knows he’s been banging on about it long enough.

You can contact Benoit here.

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