The Story So Far

A journey across the world; +500 years old mysteries; Lost Inca cities / a legendary mummy / 8 tons of gold; the most remote areas on the planet. One strikingly adventurous team.

When most of us feel the urge to do something extraordinary or to get noticed, we try to get the biggest Facebook account by adding as many friends as possible, buy the latest iPad on release date, or simply go on vacations overseas. Not Benoit and his team. At the questions ‘how was your weekend? What did you do?’, his answers are always the same, ‘It was OK. Nothing special’. Nobody would believe him if he would have say the truce. Imagine for a second: ‘I went to a party in the Artic Polar Circle. At 3.00am we went on a tour with a musher to see the aurora borealis, we got lost and almost ended up freezing, but that was nothing compared to the moment I crashed with a snowmobile a couple hours earlier…’ or ‘well, I flew to Ecuador to meet with a 80 years old treasure hunter who has fund new clues about the lost mummy of Atahualpa in one of the most remote region of South America’. His main concerns this year have been things like ‘Can I convinced this museum to borrow me this skull to do a facial reconstruction in this forensic lab in the UK’; ‘How can I monitor the level of oxygen I’ll have in my blood above 10,000 feet and more?’ or ‘How can I decrypt these pre-Inca petroglyphs?’.

The aim? Debunk few of the most tenacious mysteries in History, solve centuries’old enigmas, and discover hidden remains of lost civilizations. One of the main projects is to decrypt and document the legend of Atahualpa and the lost Inca treasure. a quest that will led him and his team from Florida to Cuzco in Peru, London, Seville, Ecuador and the Andes in the unpractical region of the Llanaganaties where many explorers have lost their life during the same attempt.

After the first months of research, the team is starting connecting the dots and identifying solid leads. We are now in contact with the best archeologists, antropologists, geologists, librarians, researchers, and treasure hunters. By leveraging social Internet technology, we have been building a social graph that helps us connecting generations of explorers and pieces of information/evidence to each other.

We are now planning several trips for the next two years. This winter, we’ll be in Peru, and will embark on a long journey accross the country, all the way to Cuzco, the Lac Titicaca until La Paz, Bolivia where we’ll be able to test our body to high altitude expeditions and see how we handle altitude sickness. We’ll then go to London where we’ll meet with the Royal Geographic Society and the Explorer Club, to then fly to Seville in Spain where we hope finding some rare documents in the General Archives of the Indies. Finally, we’ll launch an expedition to go through the Llanganatis and search for Atahualpa and the lost Inca gold.

With this new website, the team will share findings publicly and privately, report on the status of our expeditions, provide access to rare books and maps, allow passionates and researchers to connect with each other… This year, we’ll also launch a project on Kickstarter and similiar platforms to raise funds and be able to bring some additional expertise and innovation to our expeditions.

The epic adventure has to be documented, and Benoit plans to turn his journey into what will no doubt be one of the most intriguing adventure books. Can we break the seal of mystery of facts that occurred 500 years ago? Can we finally understand facts between legend and History? Can we succeed where so many have failed? So far, we have been able to access pieces of information and rare documents that experienced archaeologists and researchers took decades to discover. Every day, we are making exciting progress and get a little bit more closer to the truce.

… And best of all, it is not too late to join us. You want to have your share of adventure and can help us achieving our goals, please look at our volunteer page and see how you can help!