Guyana Jungle Discovery: Petroglyphs & a Lost Cave — Joe Trevorrow

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What happens when you walk for days through some of the most remote jungle on Earth — and stumble across a cave covered floor to ceiling in ancient drawings that no outsider has ever documented? In this Season 5 episode, Chris sits down with Joe Trevorrow, former Royal Navy sailor turned expedition guide with The Wild Tales — an indigenous-led adventure company operating deep in Guyana's interior — to unpack three extraordinary expeditions into barely explored territory.

Alongside the on-the-ground stories (rapids, sand flies, night terrors in hammocks, and jaguar tracks beside your sleeping spot), Joe shares how The Wild Tales partners with indigenous communities — the Wai Wai, Patamona, and others — to create sustainable tourism that preserves ancient sites and dying traditions. We discuss the complex tribal history of Guyana's nine indigenous nations, how a Tomb Raider game sparked a life-changing decision, and what the jungle teaches you when you stop fighting it.

Chapters:

• 00:00 A Hidden Cave in Guyana's Jungle
• 01:07 Meet Joe Trevorrow: Royal Navy to Rainforest
• 05:30 Joining the Navy and Travelling the World at 20
• 07:56 How a Tomb Raider Game Led to Guyana Expeditions
• 11:33 How Indigenous-Led Expedition Tourism Works
• 16:45 The River of Death: Paddling the Cassai Chi
• 20:09 Undocumented Petroglyphs Along the Riverbank
• 24:18 Welcome to Masakenari: The Most Remote Village
• 29:30 Tourism as a Lifeline: Keeping Traditions Alive
• 32:40 Don't Fight the Jungle: Lessons the Hard Way
• 35:21 Sitting Under the Milky Way on the River of Death
• 38:10 Night Terrors: The Scariest Night in the Jungle
• 40:12 Makarapan Mountain: 3.5 Billion Years Old
• 46:00 The Mystery Pots Nobody Can Explain
• 55:12 The Cave Expedition: 45km Through Patamona Territory
• 01:03:21 Ancient Drawings That Left Everyone Speechless
• 01:12:00 Conservation: Keeping Sites Secret vs Raising Awareness
• 01:17:49 Future Expeditions and What's Next for The Wild Tales
• 01:23:17 Pay It Forward and Call to Adventure

What You'll Learn

• What the "River of Death" actually means — and the disease theory behind its name
• How indigenous-led expedition tourism works (and why it matters)
• Why two enormous pots were found near the summit of a 3.5 billion year old mountain — and nobody can explain how they got there
• What it feels like to walk into an ancient cave and see drawings no outsider has recorded
• The leadership lesson Joe learned — and why "Navy mode" doesn't work in the jungle
• What The Wild Tales has planned for 2026–2027

Connect with Joe & The Wild Tales

• Joe Trevorrow Instagram
• The Wild Tales: https://www.thewildtales.com
• Anders Anderson episode (S3): Adventure Diaries back cata

Transcript

[00:00:00] Teaser: The Discovery

[00:00:00] Joe: We were walking through the jungle, we were walking for about an hour. We'd set up a base camp again. So we were travelling very, very light. All of a sudden out of nowhere, we just come across this rock. It's not a cave. It's like this rock with like, it looks like a crown or like a claw with someone's hand. And it's resting on three other massive rocks. And I remember I turned around to Anders and Anders, he just looked at me and just went, "What the hell?" And we were just like, "Oh my God, what have we just found?" And we went inside and everyone was just rendered completely speechless. You make the classic mistake, but now you see, like, I see everyone make, and Anders sees everyone make — you just put too much effort into something that's not gonna work. And it's that stubbornness and refusal to give up. And there was one camp, I'd made, I just picked a really terrible, terrible place to do it. And I decided to camp in this like sandy ditch. And there were so many sand flies. I was getting eaten alive, and I was getting really, really frustrated. And the worst thing you can do is—

[00:01:07] Introduction

[00:01:07] Announcer: Welcome to the Adventure Diaries Podcast, where we share tales of adventure, connection, and exploration from the smallest of creators to the larger than life adventurers. We hope their stories inspire you to go create your own extraordinary adventures. And now your host, Chris Watson.

[00:01:29] Chris: Welcome to another episode of The Adventure Diaries. Today we're joined by Joe Trevorrow. Joe is a former Royal Navy sailor turned expedition guide with The Wild Tales, an indigenous-led company operating deep in the rainforests of Guyana, which you may recall from my Season Three episode with Anders Anderson. And for Joe, what started out as a punt on an expedition has quietly turned into something far bigger. In today's episode, we explore three of his extraordinary expeditions deep in Guyana's interior. A month-long journey down the River of Death where undocumented petroglyphs lined the banks. A 10-day overland push to the summit of Makarapan Mountain in the Uni region of Guyana, over 3 billion years old and barely explored. And we discuss the mystery of what they found near to the summit. And then there's the cave hidden in cloud forest on the Venezuelan border, covered floor to ceiling in ancient drawings that the outside world had yet to see. What an episode this is — it has all the hallmarks of a true Indiana Jones adventure. So please settle in and enjoy this fantastic conversation with Joe Trevorrow and The Wild Tales. Joe Trevorrow, welcome to the Adventure Diaries. How are you?

[00:02:59] Joe: Yeah, good. Thanks. I'm very excited to do this podcast and thank you very much for having me on.

[00:03:04] Chris: No, it's a pleasure. And as we were saying just before we set up, quite interesting times, the expeditions that you had done — we will come to that, you know — the fame of some of your expeditions in Guyana with an archaeological angle to them. You were off hunting for petroglyphs and I was doing something similar, but not to the same extent as you were. So it's exciting and I'm really, really buzzing for this episode today, Joe. So I thank you for your time. I'm sure listeners and viewers are going to get a lot out of this as well. Excellent. So, as we always do on this show, before we get into all the good stuff, the adventures, the expeditions, I want to just frame it up a little bit, you know, understand a little bit more about Joe before we get into your experiences in Guyana and stuff. So—

[00:03:56] Joe's Background & Navy Service

[00:03:56] Chris: What was your kind of, what was it like as a younger Joe? What were your formative experiences in terms of outdoors and adventure?

[00:04:05] Joe: I was quite lucky. I think my parents have always fostered quite a good attitude towards the outdoors. I was always going with my dad for walks. We always went on mainly UK holidays. It was always very outdoors, a lot of interest in wildlife, a lot of cycling, especially around the New Forest. Very much interested in that sort of thing. And yeah, I think I was brought up to maybe be in the forest areas more than a desert or the Arctic.

[00:04:37] Chris: So what was it like growing up then as a younger Joe? In terms of formative experiences as far as the outdoors and adventure goes?

[00:04:45] Joe: Yeah, I think I was very lucky with my parents always fostering a strong connection with the outdoors. I'd always go on family holidays, mainly in the UK. Places like the New Forest and more. Growing up at school, did the Ten Tors. Actually, I didn't complete the Ten Tors, with a few bad feet. And I think maybe that had a bit of an impact. I thought, okay, I can't let that happen again. We need to prove ourselves and just be a bit stronger in the outdoors. But it was a good experience growing up. It was very much—

[00:05:24] Chris: Yeah. And did you, from a career perspective, you went into — was it the Navy that you went into as well?

[00:05:30] Joe: Yeah, it was, yeah. So I joined the Navy in 2015. I did just four years and then I was quite lucky. I mean, I didn't do anything particularly special in the Navy. Mainly just cleaned a lot. But when we went around the world and everything, it was very good. I think instead of maybe going to the nearest bar, I really took advantage of it. When we stopped in ports and stuff, I always made sure that I was going out and seeing the world. And we did some really cool things in the deserts in India. In Kenya. It was very much worth it and I think I was a pain in the arse for my POs and chiefs constantly asking if I can go do stuff, and just generally causing a headache.

[00:06:13] Chris: I can relate to that a little bit. I mean, I have a corporate career and whenever I am — because I travel quite a bit with my day job — I've always got one eye on what we can do in terms of adventures or outdoor experiences to coincide with that. But so, did the Navy give you the bug, the proper bug for adventure? Because we'll come on to your experience with The Wild Tales in a minute, but is that where it — did that grab you then, in the Navy?

[00:06:41] Joe: Yeah, definitely. I think it was just every day was different and every country you got to go to. I spent a lot of time googling about places, where to go. And I mean, I was young. I think I was what, 20? Yeah, 20 when I joined. Getting that opportunity at such a young age — I mean, you got to travel the world and get paid for it. Albeit not too much, but it was still good. You weren't really spending much money. So I think, yeah, it definitely inspired me.

[00:07:15] Chris: Yeah. And I mean, I'll connect the dots for maybe people that are new listeners or aren't quite aware, but you're wearing a Wild Tales t-shirt at the minute.

[00:07:24] Joe: Yeah.

[00:07:25] Chris: We had the founder, Anders Anderson, on in I think Season Three. This will be Season Five, but it was Season Three. So we had a bit of a good chat around all things The Wild Tales and Guyana, which was one of my favourite episodes actually. It's super interesting. But before we get to your expeditions, I believe you went on one of Anders' courses just as a tourist initially. Is that the genesis or not?

[00:07:56] Connecting with The Wild Tales

[00:07:56] Joe: No, actually I went — so I went on the Wai Wai, went down on an expedition to the Wai Wai, I say. It's very strange how I — I messaged him and I thought, okay, I really wanna see the jungle. And weirdly, it's a super nerdy thing that inspired me, but I was playing the latest Tomb Raider game and I was just playing through it and I just thought, I really wanna go to the jungle. And then I sort of sat at work and was having a look around and about like, you know, it's difficult. I just thought, I really want to get somewhere really remote and I just didn't want it to be like just a holiday. I wanted to just escape a bit and really get out there. And I was playing this game and again, it's so nerdy, but I saw Anders' website come up, The Wild Tales, and I was like, okay. This looks like the one. And I just sent him an email and then he said, "Yeah, yeah, come along." We had a quick chat and everything and I think he thought I was okay and I was good enough for the expedition. And then yeah, I went along and it went really, really well. I think me and him got along incredibly well. And then at the end of it — well, when we talk about the Wai Wai, we'll get into each one and how they led to another. So one thing led to another and then last year he sort of said, "Fancy giving us a go and working for The Wild Tales part-time?" I mean, it's an absolute golden opportunity. So I didn't say no.

[00:09:29] Chris: Yeah. So what was that first — we'll come to, there's three expeditions that we want to talk about today. I might need help with pronunciation. So the Wai Wai expedition, the Makarapan Mountain expedition — I think that's right — there you go. And the Makaima cave expedition, which is pretty interesting. Excellent. So what was that first experience like with Anders then? In fact, sorry Joe, had you been to the jungle before in the Navy?

[00:10:01] Joe: I've been to — I mean, I wouldn't compare it to the primary rainforests of Guyana — but I've been to Kenya and India and we've done some sort of just naughty day expeditions and things like that out there. And I find it captivating — there's so much wildlife and there's so much going on. And yeah, so this was just a completely new environment. I had no idea what to expect. I really went into it quite blind, but just with an attitude to try and make it work.

[00:10:32] Chris: Yeah. And what was it like? Did you do this — because I know he does the jungle survival courses where you learn a lot of the bushcraft and tool making and lighting fires and stuff.

[00:10:43] Joe: No, I've not actually done that yet. I need to come and do it. It's — I'm very much sort of expedition-focused. It's where my experience with the Navy and my DofE and stuff has always been like — if you ask Anders, I'm quite a poor bushman. I mean, I was in Guyana a week and a half ago and watching me shoot a bow and arrow is comical, I think.

[00:11:07] Chris: I mean yeah, Anders has just released a short documentary advertising the jungle survival course and stuff, which is on YouTube, which I had watched, which is incredible. It's fascinating. So I'd recommend that people give that a watch as well, which I'll link in the show notes. But do you wanna frame up the expeditions then and how they led to each other and some of the journeys through each of those?

[00:11:33] Joe: Yeah.

[00:11:33] The Wai Wai Expedition: River of Death

[00:11:33] Joe: So the way that The Wild Tales sort of operates, I think, is probably the best place to start. So what happens is The Wild Tales can approach indigenous communities. So all the expeditions that The Wild Tales runs — the basis of it, and why I think it's so successful — is that it's indigenous-led. So the likes of you and I, and Anders, and everyone — I always think, and Anders will say as well — we're like children in the jungle, you know. We're very much out of our depth, out of our comfort zone. You just wouldn't venture into the jungle without the Amerindian indigenous — they're your lifeline. They can get you in, they can get you out. They understand the environment. So The Wild Tales goes up to various tribes, and you've got nine indigenous nations in Guyana. So the couple that we'll be focusing on: the Wai Wai, which live very far down in the south of the country. You've got the Macushi, which live sort of in the central belt. And there's the Caribs, which as the name suggests comes from the Caribbean. And I'll sort of go into the history of how all these interlinked with each other when we do the case studies. And then you've got the Akawaio, the Patamona and the Arawak. And these tribes still exist today. They're the nine indigenous nations that are left. And then there were a couple of indigenous nations that have gone extinct due to various reasons. And I think the last one went extinct at about 1925. So we come into these communities and we can partner with them and say, "Do you want to do tourism? We can provide the logistics, you can provide the guides, and we'll give you a very, very good wage and salary." And the idea is that we offer an alternate form of income as opposed to their normal forms of income, which sometimes are not as sustainable to the environment. And the world's never gonna run out of tourists. So as long as you do it with sustainability in mind, you're never gonna run out of income, is the idea. So yeah, we approached the Wai Wai. I think Anders approached them in 2023, and it was his first time running that expedition. And I think logistically for Anders, it was maybe a bit of a nightmare. You're trying to get 10 guests down two river systems to one of the most remote indigenous communities in the world. And I think everywhere along the way, things could have gone very, very wrong. There was a lot of transport that was just being relied on to be on time and be where it should be. We sort of pulled it off and it was really, really successful. But we started off going down into the Rupununi. So a little bit of, to give people an idea of what Guyana is like — everyone thinks Guyana and the Amazon is just pure rainforest. It's not. I think people sometimes think as well that the rainforest is a very flat environment. So if you, I think people imagine the Amazon, you see the big open river and you see vast planes of primary rainforest and that's sort of what everybody thinks, but it's not. It's very, very mountainous. And Guyana has got three significant mountain ranges. So it's got the Pakaraima Mountains — and that's famous for Arthur Conan Doyle, the tepuis and Lost World and Mount Roraima. And then you've got the Kanuku Mountains, which was made famous by Lucy Shepherd when she did her crossing of it, which was an incredible feat. She was tough doing that. And then you've got the Acarai Mountains in the south. And the Acarai are hardly explored. And they separate Brazil from Guyana. And the Acarai Mountains sort of extend from Guyana to Suriname to French Guiana. And this is where you get the Guiana Shield, which is a unique sort of biome separate to the Amazon. So everything north of the Acarai flows into the rivers of the Essequibo, for example. And everything south flows into the Rio Negro, Rio Branco and then into the Amazon. So it's sort of like a dividing range. And this is where this Acarai mountain area is where the Wai Wai call home. So we would be journeying across an area first called the Rupununi, which again, everyone thinks it's really forested, but the Rupununi is this massive open savannah and it's like Africa, but without all the sort of megafauna. Sort of imagine like the plains of Tanzania. Very famous for ranching. It is the Wild West. It's absolutely incredible. You can sit there and feel like you're back in 1850 with cow wrestlers and all these things. It's absolutely amazing. You just go back in time. We start there and we headed across the Rupununi down to a place called Parabara, which is the first sort of Wai Wai village. We stayed there for a bit and then we ventured down a river called the Cassai Chi. And this was really, really interesting. Anders had been down here on his own before just to scout out because it's important to do a little bit of a recce before we take tourists there. And on the Cassai Chi River, we were coming across lots and lots of petroglyphs. So it was very strange. Some of them were very obvious, some of them very worn, some of them very weathered. So I think they're of all different ages, and it's important to stress that neither me or Anders are archaeologists or biologists. We are just finding this stuff. And so we're just making our best guess. But we were going down the Cassai Chi River and there's quite an interesting story associated with it. So we're finding these petroglyphs and it's evidence of people that have inhabited it for at least a couple of hundred years. And we did some research afterwards and we were going through the journeys of Schomburgk, who completed — I think it was in 1838 to '41. He did his journeys in Guyana and he was the first real explorer to map Guyana out. And he went around all the tribes, some of which don't exist today. And he met up with them and sort of generally defined the borders of what was then British Guyana to establish what rights Britain had over the territory and where the border should be drawn up. And ironically it's causing some geopolitical issues today. He came across this tribe called the Taruma, and the Wai Wai were said to be having these sort of conflicts together. But we did a little bit of research into this, and the Wai Wai originate from Northern Brazil. They were known to be quite a strong sort of warrior nation. They were aggressive. But the Wai Wai, when we spoke to them, they said that what they would do is they would come across a Taruma village and they'd raid the village, kill everyone, and then leave a few people to go run up to the next village who would then bring a war party down and then they'd ambush them. Now, that was coming from the Wai Wai people, and you know, you've gotta be careful about where you're getting your sources from. The research we did into it sort of pointed a bit of a different thing, and it's quite an interesting theory we perhaps got that came out from this expedition. And that's — what had happened is the Wai Wai had migrated north from Brazil, I think due to pressures from the colonial Portuguese. Now the Wai Wai, being in contact with the Portuguese for a couple of hundred years before the tribes in Guyana, they perhaps were immune to the diseases that they would later pass on to these Taruma tribes. And we actually think that it wasn't war that killed the Taruma. It was this contact with the Wai Wai, who were way more immune to these diseases, that killed them. Because the interesting thing is the Cassai Chi literally translates as the River of Death. And it's because it's said that Taruma bodies would come flowing down it. So we're journeying down this River of Death and we're coming across all these amazing petroglyphs — not dying. And these are fascinating. You've got some really interesting ones and there's a quite common one in Guyana. It's called the Tim Hairy Man. And it's sort of like this stick man that's been drawn and they're quite like — you get them in places like Aishalton, which is probably, if you googled petroglyphs in Guyana, would be your number one hit. It's a big rock in the savannah with all these drawings on it. But these petroglyphs we were finding — they'd not been documented by outsiders before. The indigenous had been coming across them and going past them. And they were all the way down the Cassai Chi into the Essequibo River and all the way down to the village of Masakenari, which is where the Wai Wai live today. There were quite a few interesting petroglyphs, and it's hard with petroglyphs to always pinpoint the meaning behind them. And you don't wanna pretend to guess. Sometimes I think we can always fantasise it's a really spiritual meaning, but I think most of the time it's quite a boring but logical one. But there was one that was really good. It was by a rapid and it had — it was this rock that was quite prominent where these rapids were. And it had a sun on it. So our theory was that if the water's low and you can see the sun, it's safe to pass. If the water's high, you can't see the sun. It means the rainy season's too strong. You shouldn't go over the rapid. Which was our theory behind it, but it was quite interesting to maybe have those connections with people that drew that hundreds or maybe thousands of years ago.

[00:21:24] Chris: Yeah, I mean there are various theories around petroglyphs across the globe, really, and some of them do actually lean into that — that they are either warning signs or ways to communicate with other tribes and things like that as well. So, I mean, that is fascinating. What was it like when you were trying to cross then? Was the terrain difficult at that point?

[00:21:45] Joe: Yeah, I mean the Wai Wai guides that we had, they were immense. What they do is you get to the top of the rapid — we're in these big massive dugout canoes and we had little outboard engines on them, but these things weighed maybe a good couple of tons. You couldn't carry this over the rapid. So what they do, they use a series of ropes and we'd get involved. But I mean, I think at this point we're probably more of a hindrance than a help, just looking at each other like, "Okay, just maybe leave it to the experts." And they would use these ropes to basically guide the canoes down the rapids, but sometimes one of them would be in the water holding onto the canoe, just pushing it away. And the physical strength that required — I mean, you see the Wai Wai, the Amerindian, and they're just physically so strong. It's like when you see an athlete in the Olympics and you just see someone who is just physically strong and just demonstrating that — it was awe-inspiring. It was very impressive. And again, it made you feel quite humble when you were sat there. Yeah.

[00:22:57] Chris: Had the Wai Wai that were with you at that point — had they been down that route before?

[00:23:03] Joe: Yeah, so this is sort of the primary way in and out for their village. So there is an airstrip there. You can fly in. But mostly, to get supplies in and out, they normally use the Essequibo River up to Parabara and then that's their access into the Rupununi. It's a trip that would normally take them between two and three days if they were really going for it. For us, it took us quite a bit longer. I think it was four or five days down there. And on the way they would just camp in the jungle. They would use the river for as long as possible and then they would just camp straight in the jungle and they would live off what they're catching and eating. Same as we did.

[00:23:49] Chris: Yeah. Did they have any theories about the petroglyphs or anything — any wisdom to pass on at all?

[00:23:58] Joe: Not so much. Again, it was quite magical and this will be quite a theme through all the case studies — is that we're sharing the awe of it with them. At the same time, both outsiders and the Wai Wai have an understanding of what it is and the significance of it. It was quite interesting when we got down to Masakenari. Into the village, you're welcomed into the village. We pay the village fees and you're welcomed in by the village chief, which is known as a toshao. It was really nice. They had this big ceremony. You don't get outsiders down there very often, and it made you feel like you were part of the village. And I went off talking to one of the older residents and I was just generally interested to see what the older resident's experience was of living as a Wai Wai, basically, as they were discovered. Because I mean, they were only recently discovered properly in the 1950s when missionaries came down from northern Guyana to bring Christianity to them. And there was this older lady in the village, and it was fascinating. I was asking, "What was it like before the missionaries came, growing up as a girl?" And she was sort of like, "Yeah, it was different. We had a different religion, different way of life. It was very much connected to the jungle. You had these medicine men, essentially, that would — the whole belief system was tied to the rainforest and different plants, different gods and stuff." Absolutely fascinating. And then, out of nowhere, she pulls out this RGS journal. And it's missing its front cover. And she was like, "Oh yeah, this is me, this is my dad." And it was, I think, from about 1952. And this was the first British expedition explorers that came out. I was like, "How have you got this? How is this in Masakenari?" And it was just — I thought, what is this doing down here? And it was amazing that she had the awareness.

[00:26:03] Chris: Yeah. I mean, with the Wai Wai, are they universally bought into this kind of new way of life where responsible and ethical tourism — to an extent where you can bring Westerners into this environment? Are they all, as a tribe or a nation or people, whatever the collective term is — are they all bought into that, or do you find any sort of friction or hostilities or nervousness maybe when you come into their villages?

[00:26:35] Joe: I think so. I think you get — it's like a society that we live in. You get people who are quite open to the idea. You get people who are possibly not so keen on outsiders coming into the village and have sort of reservations about what the true intentions are. And I mean, I'd guess the same if I suddenly had a load of outsiders come into my town or village. People would have different opinions about what their intentions are. I think rightfully so. And I think people have a different upbringing in these areas. Some people have better education than others. Same as in Britain. I think everywhere you travel around the world — it's just the same but different. It really is. Yeah, everyone's got the same problems, the same attitudes, just — and some of the older people, I think you got the impression that they were missing the times before Christianity. Other people embraced it and they were deeply religious. And it's impressive to see the dedication. But I think when the first explorers came down, they basically came to the Wai Wai and gave them the option of, "Do you want to turn to Christianity?" And I think a good proportion of them said no. And they just went straight into the rainforest. So if they're still there today — I mean, this is an incredibly remote area. It's — nobody goes into the jungles between Guyana, Brazil, Suriname. It's completely uncharted and there is every chance there are people still there. It is that remote.

[00:28:18] Chris: Yeah. What was it like for the others that you took into that — in terms of their reactions? I know you can't speak on their behalf, but what was it like to see the others coming into that kind of close contact in these so remote areas? With these remote tribes?

[00:28:38] Joe: Yeah, I think naturally, if you're going to come on an expedition like this, you're gonna have a sense of respect and appreciation of what you're walking into and how to behave. Very much similar. And the best thing about it is you can get as involved or as uninvolved as you want. Some people just love to be in one of the most remote places in the world and just sit on the veranda of their guest house in the hammock. Just looking out towards the mountains and that fascinates them.

[00:29:09] Chris: Can I ask a quick favour please? If you are enjoying the Adventure Diaries Podcast, could I ask that you take the time to click that subscribe or follow button, and if you're feeling extra generous, a written review or a star rating on your platform of choice would be greatly appreciated. Now let's get back to the episode. Thank you.

[00:29:30] Joe: And I can fully appreciate that — that's your escape from the chaos of the modern world. Other people got more involved and were asking — there's more interest in the way of life and how they build their canoes. And it's very important that we have people who are interested in this, because tourism is one of the key things that's gonna keep these traditions alive. You know, now if you go to the Essequibo River, there's gonna be a lot more aluminium boats. The old style canoes, the traditions of how they make them and how they sort of — it's a fascinating process. They use fire to break out the wood and soften it up and widen it and put loads of wedges in it. But that's dying, and tourism is keeping that alive. There's no need to do it any more. Why would you spend days building a canoe when you could just buy an aluminium boat and it's lighter? It serves a better purpose. So I understand it, but it's good to have people, at least some people, who keep these traditions alive.

[00:30:32] Chris: Yeah. And I'm sure Anders has got a video of that. Because when you say that, I can picture it — when it's in the forest where they've got it over kind of stilts and they've got the inside of it burning away and, as you said, they're using that to shape it. So yeah, it's art in its truest form. So that expedition, Joe, that Wai Wai expedition — is that the same one that The Wild Tales advertise? Because I know they do multiple expeditions with the Wai Wai, but is that something that people can come and join again?

[00:31:02] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. So it's gonna be a regular expedition. We were — Anders was the first to do it on his own to scout out. And then we were the first group to come down and do it. And every year we hope to be running a trip that sort of mirrors the same route. And the wildlife you see on the way down is absolutely incredible. We saw this huge Anaconda. It must have been like 20 foot. And it was basking on the side of the river. You could only see part of its body. I think there's a photo on social media somewhere. But it basically had to keep rotating parts of its body to warm it up, it was that big. This thing must have been about two foot wide. It was just fat. And I was thinking, that is a monster. And I mean, you see caiman, capybara, the bird life. And it's very strange when you're moving through the river systems like this — you get different zones. So you'll have a zone all of a sudden where there's loads of macaws and then you'll go through another zone where there's not — you don't hear as much bird life. And the guys are saying that's possibly because there's a jaguar or something in the area, so everything's going very, very quiet. And then the next section would be full of monkeys. So it's not just like you're going down the river where it's all the same. It's very different and it's quite amazing.

[00:32:30] Chris: Yeah. What was your experience personally like going through that? Since that was the first long expedition in that environment — how did you, what did you learn about yourself and the environment?

[00:32:44] Joe: I think — I'll use Anders' phrase — "Whatever Anders and the guys can't teach you, the jungle will." And you really learned that. It went well. The first couple of nights setting up my camp, you make the classic mistake. But now you see, like, I see everyone making it, and Anders sees everyone make it — you just put too much effort into something that's not gonna work. And it's that stubbornness and refusal to give up. And there was one camp, I'd made — I just picked a really terrible, terrible place to do it. And I decided to camp in this sandy ditch and there were so many sand flies. I was getting eaten alive and I was getting really, really frustrated. And the worst thing you can do is start to lose your temper. You just do not fight the jungle because you will lose every time. And Anders really wanted to go fishing. And he was saying, "Joe, come on, come on. Come, go fishing." And I just couldn't get my camp sorted. The knots were going wrong, everything's going wrong. And I came down to the boat just looking really flustered. Like genuinely quite annoyed. And he sort of took one look at me and he went, "Yeah, you've learned that the hard way. Now you're not gonna make that mistake again." So by the end of it, I think with all guests, day one, day two is challenging. You're new to an environment — of course, nobody expects you to know things straight away. But by the end of it, you're in your routine. You've got your little thing going on, you know the knots, you know what the plan is every day. You become very independent quite quickly because you're thrown into that environment where you have to be. But there was — I would highly recommend anyone who gets a chance to go down to The Wild Tales. It was really good. So it leads us quite nicely — we were returning from that trip. So this was after this terrible sand fly camp. And we were sat on the banks of the Cassai Chi on these big rock boulders. They were very flat, quite typical of the area. And all of a sudden I get sent this photo of a footprint and we're like, "Okay, what's going on here?" In this day and age, not many people go through the jungle barefoot. And it's sort of — why have we got this footprint out of nowhere? And it was sent by one of the indigenous guys near Makarapan Mountain. So we're sat in the river and he sort of tells us the story. And you feel the hairs on the back of your neck standing up and you realise where you are and you realise what you're being sent. You think, hmm, I've got to walk back to my hammock. And it was pitch black and you certainly go to bed thinking about it. And I remember I stayed up. And I sat out on the river and it was just an experience that just sticks with you. You had the whole Milky Way above you, just in full spectacular style. And then you could see — it was brightening up that you could see the opposite bank. So you could see where the tree line was and you could see into the black of the forest. And then, for people who've never heard howler monkeys before — and this was one of my first times hearing them — it sounds like the most horrendous thing is coming towards you. And it moves with the wind. It feels like it's actually coming towards you. And you're like, "Are these howler monkeys swinging through the trees doing it?" And they're obviously — there's a jaguar, there's a predator around. They're kicking off at something. And you're sat there and I just remember having a thought. I thought, I've just seen a photo of a footprint. I'm listening to howler monkeys going, "Oh my God." And I just had the thought that I could have been sat here 5 million years ago and nothing would've changed. Literally nothing would've changed. Which is a crazy thought.

[00:36:37] Chris: I mean, it must play with — it must take a little while for the mind to settle into that type of environment. It must play on your mind a little bit because you're going from maybe city life, to an extent where it's a different degree of sensory overload, to that — where your primal instincts are tweaking at all points. What was your first couple of nights like getting to sleep and stuff in the jungle? Was it a bit nerve-wracking?

[00:37:08] Joe: I would say it was nerve-wracking. If anything, I actually think — Anders has touched on it in his podcast — life becomes a lot more simple. You have the next task to focus on. You don't have to worry about a million other things going on around that. You just have: I need to get my hammock up. I need to then eat. I then need to get some sleep. I think for me it was quite easy. It actually became easier than real life, I think. There were times where — I think one night I woke up in the morning and there were jaguar tracks next to my hammock and you think, wow. And then the best thing is when people have nightmares. There were two instances where this has happened. There was one on the Wai Wai which wasn't too bad. I was like, "Okay, someone's having a nightmare. This is nothing bad." But there was one on Makarapan Mountain. And this will forever be the most scared I've ever been in my life. So when I go to sleep in a hammock, I normally just go to sleep in my pants. Now, if I'm gonna die, I don't wanna die in my pants. I wanna die at least fully clothed or something like that. But there was this — we had this guest and he had this full-on night terror. He started howling in his hammock. And I remember, I immediately — I don't know if anyone's ever been so scared that you almost stop breathing. And I woke up and I just — you're just silent and you're just listening, thinking every nerve is on complete "oh my God" mode. And one of my friends in the other hammock, he just went, "Joe, is that you?" I just thought, oh no, it's not him. And then we got out of our hammocks and had our machetes in our hand thinking, "What on earth is going on here?" And then he howled again and we're like, "Oh my God. It's just him having a nightmare." But for those moments — I did not sleep again that night. I was just — adrenaline was pumping. And I thought, oh God, what have we walked into?

[00:39:10] Chris: There's nothing more unnerving than hearing someone talk or screaming in their sleep. My mother used to do that. You'd hear it from down the hallway and it would just — as a little boy, it would terrify me. But that in the middle of the jungle — I can imagine. You must have thought he was getting eaten alive by a jaguar or something. Did he have any recollection of the dream?

[00:39:39] Joe: No, not at all. I mean, I'm not sure what he was dreaming about. It was obviously quite scary. We just woke up in the morning and were like, "What was that about?" I think we said, "You've traumatised everyone around you."

[00:39:53] Chris: God. So after the Wai Wai expedition, you had the Makarapan Mountain expedition and then the cave expedition as well.

[00:40:04] Joe: Makarapan? Yeah.

[00:40:07] Chris: Makarapan.

[00:40:07] Joe: Yeah.

[00:40:12] Makarapan Mountain: The Mystery Pots

[00:40:12] Joe: So Makarapan Mountain — the footprint led us on to this expedition. Makarapan Mountain is situated in Central Guyana. It looks like a volcano, but it's not. It's got this basin and crater on the inside. And we heard this story from the Macushi village of Surama, which said that what had happened is the Caribs had come down — and it fits into this idea that there's this big tribal war going on about a hundred years ago. And the Caribs, what they used to do is they used to come and raid the Macushi and Patamona villages. And the Macushi and Patamona would retreat up into these mountain areas. And that's a theme that carries on with Makaima. At the top of Makarapan Mountain, one of the guys had been up there a couple of months prior and he'd found these massive pots. These pots were like — he didn't send us any photographs, so we had no idea and it was a bit of a mystery. So we thought, we've had the photograph of the footprint. In all likelihood, Makarapan isn't as remote as Makaima. It's at the junction of two quite major rivers. There's some mining going on around it. There are no uncontacted people there. And if there were, I don't think it would necessarily be responsible for tourists to go in and make contact. So it was more of a — that's quite interesting, but in all reality it probably was just a miner or a local guy doing some cassava farming, just walking around. And that was that. So then we thought, okay, there's a story behind Makarapan Mountain and the pottery involved. And we said, "Let's go do an expedition to see if we can find it." And we went up there and it — this was a tough expedition. This is overland. There are no boats involved. You carry all you can. And there were only six of us and we had to climb into this basin. And the jungle in the middle of the basin was incredibly dense. And then when you move up onto these mountain tops, the tall primary rainforest turns into more cloud forest, which becomes incredibly, incredibly thick. And we walked up, pretty much following rivers into the basin. Now, the reason we did that is because it's the most logical route you'd take if you were escaping someone. And it was really interesting because we found in these caves up this river, there were lots of broken pieces of pottery. And there was one really interesting thing in one of these caves. And that was a shard of rhyolite quartz. Now that's really interesting because that indicates that the people there had been trading with the people in the Pakaraima Mountains, where Mount Roraima is, because that's the only place it's found. So there's definitely something deeper about how these tribes were all interconnected in the past. And I mean, nobody really knows too much about the tribal history of Guyana. There's a BBC article where you type in "History of Guyana" and arrogantly, it starts at the time the British took over. It's like, no — there's thousands of years of history before this.

[00:43:23] Chris: What's the distance between Makarapan Mountain and Mount Roraima? Where are they in terms of locality?

[00:43:32] Joe: A good couple of hundred miles.

[00:43:34] Chris: Yeah. So they're not next door. Okay.

[00:43:42] Joe: So I mean, we shouldn't — I think sadly, a lot of people underestimate the tribes. These people are incredibly resourceful. And of course, in the past they would've been using the river systems. And these would've been the true expert bushmen and bushwomen. They would've been absolutely completely adapted to moving through the rainforest and trading with one another in whatever they were trading. So we found — we took some photographs and said — when we find these archaeological sites, we don't touch them. It's not our place to touch them. It would be incredibly disrespectful to the indigenous guides we've got with us, let alone the whole community. All we do is find, take some photographs and mark the location. And then it's up to qualified archaeologists with the permissions of the indigenous and the country itself to do excavations, should they want to. And we moved past these caves. We got into the basin and then we had a day dedicated to getting up to the top of the Makarapan summit. It's a mountain — I think it's about 960 metres, so it's about the height of a Munro in Scotland. But if you imagine a Munro covered in the thickest jungle you could imagine.

[00:44:53] Chris: Right?

[00:44:55] Joe: It's like, yeah. I think even the guys we had with us — there was one Patamona and two — it was actually Vivian and Carlos, who had done Lucy's trip with her. They're just hard as nails. And Vivian was getting annoyed at the jungle. He was visibly getting frustrated. And he did an absolutely fantastic job. The trail they cut — I mean, us outsiders, when we start swinging machetes around, I think everyone gets a little bit nervous. But these guys really know how to use them. And they moved up cutting the trail, us following close behind, and they got us to the summit. And the views from the top were completely spectacular. You're looking over hundreds of miles of completely unbroken rainforest. It's actually a trip we're running again next year. And more interesting than the views — we got below the summit and this is where they said they found these pots. And we were thinking, okay, it's gonna be like a little plate. It's gonna be quite underwhelming. Obviously it's not gonna be spectacular — why would it be? It's at the top of a mountain. And we got there and there were these two absolutely giant pots. And these things — I compare them to, if you ever watched World's Strongest Man with the Atlas Stones, they were about that size, but hollow. It just triggered questions. Firstly, why on earth would you carry pots all the way to the top of the mountain? There's no water source there, there's no food source there. What's the point? Was it used for making sure there is a food source or water source there? You fill them up with water, fill them up with maybe some cassava, and then if you were retreating up there, say from a raiding Carib party, would you have a safe place to stay? Or is it something spiritual? And this, Makarapan Mountain was a great location for connecting with whatever gods they believed in or whatever forest spirits. But I think the most mysterious thing is how on earth do you carry that? If you actually imagine trying to carry an Atlas Stone — something that's round — you'd be using your biceps, carrying that in your arms up that mountain. It damn near killed us to get to the top of that mountain, let alone carrying that. Even Vivian, Carlos and Jonah, the Patamona guy — these are incredibly experienced bushmen. They really know how to pack their warishi for the jungle — it's almost like a backpack made out of palm leaves. They're the experts at carrying loads in the jungle. And they were just baffled. None of us knew how you could transport that up there. And this mountain is almost vertical at points. You're using all four limbs to scramble up it, you're grabbing onto roots, you're grabbing everything.

[00:48:00] Chris: Yeah. So there's no trails. There's no way they're taking animals up there or whatever.

[00:48:05] Joe: No, it's completely bizarre. To go to that effort, you must have had a very good reason to do it.

[00:48:12] Chris: Yeah. How many pots did you see, Joe?

[00:48:16] Joe: It was just two. Just two pots. So it was really strange. You had this overhang. It was like this cliff and it was just situated — just two pots below the cliff. About 50 metres below the summit. And at the top of this summit — I think everyone's probably picturing big trees and stuff — it's not at all. It's just thick, horrible, thorny bush. It's probably no more than 10 foot tall and it's just dense. Why would you go through that?

[00:48:50] Chris: Yeah. Are there any other mountains nearby? Like summits? Because I know, just when you mentioned Munro, I'm thinking about Ben Lomond, which is one of the ones closest to me. There's stories going back where people used to take stuff up to the top to burn, back hundreds of years ago, to warn other clansmen about people approaching. So I'm wondering if maybe, you know, I don't know, we're theorising here, but whether there was some sort of signalling or gifts to the gods or something. But who knows? Fascinating.

[00:49:32] Joe: So sort of like a signal station. Yeah.

[00:49:36] Chris: I mean, yeah. Are there any other mountains nearby, or is that the only — is it isolated, that mountain?

[00:49:43] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like a completely isolated peak. And what's fascinating about it is Makarapan is the oldest rock in South America. It's 3.5 billion years old. I think there's only some rock up in Canada that predates it. So it's just this really unique geological feature, which is just this mountain that's thrust up in the middle of a very flat environment. I mean, you can see the foothills of the Pakaraima Mountains. It wouldn't be impossible — if you lit a fire up there, other people would see it. But you'd have to have a big fire because you've got to get the smoke above the trees and that sort of thing.

[00:50:24] Chris: Yeah. When you're documenting that as well — have you shared those findings with any of the archaeological bodies or anything? Has anyone taken any sort of interest in that?

[00:50:35] Joe: Yeah, very much so. As it should be, rightly done, we share a lot of our findings with the University of Georgetown in Guyana. And there's a couple of contacts there that we basically say, "These are our findings." Now, for us, that's as far as we can go. We can give it to the relevant archaeological departments, and I think it should be in-country. I don't think — I'm a big fan of cross-academic collaboration across multiple countries and stuff — but it should be the host country that's initiating that. And sometimes I think, as a tourism company, we can push for it, but we shouldn't be the ones advocating it and organising it. We're the enabler in this, and it's got to be the archaeologists that get all the academic permissions and permits and things like that to do it. But there's been some significant interest. I think with the Makarapan one — you imagine, if someone finds a couple of Roman pots in a field in the UK, it's not gonna be headline news. It's not gonna be a sensationalist story. It's absolutely fascinating and for us it was huge. I think when you've got a lot of other things being discovered and a lot of interesting — you see all these lost cities in Mexico being discovered in the jungle. A few pots at the top of the mountain possibly isn't as high on the academic discovery list. So I think we have quite a sense of reality of how important — it's very important for the Macushi people and it's very important for the Patamona and the history of the area. But it's a very local find. But that was incredibly different from our experience of Makaima, which I think the Makarapan Mountain one really set into motion — the fact that we are gonna start looking to do these archaeological expeditions because there is so much to discover. So it was a 10-day expedition. How we did it is we moved into the basin carrying our own gear. So you're probably looking at carrying between 20 to 25 kilos. And that's including your rations. You're gonna be supplementing with fish. But we were quite sensible. We were gonna try and do the summit carrying full packs, but we didn't. We managed to make a base camp and we went up there carrying just our CamelBaks and a couple of snacks, with the idea to get up and down in the day. And we did that. But that was a tough day. There were points where I think myself and one other went ahead as we were coming down just to get camp ready. You know when people stop talking — it just gets to the point of, this is very quickly turning into type four fun.

[00:53:28] Chris: Yeah.

[00:53:29] Joe: And then I remember we got back down to camp and we just could not get the fire going. And it was just — when you're getting so frustrated because you've got no one to blame. And I hate it because normally I'm like, "Ah, someone else's fault." But when it's just your fault, you're like, "I have to just sit here and take this." And we were both looking at each other just getting really annoyed. And eventually we got the fire working. But it was a great experience because it took you to the point where you were incredibly tired and you knew you still had a lot of tasks ahead of you. And it's: how do you deal with completing those tasks when you're in such a tired state? But the whole expedition lasted 10 days. I think it was physically eight days in the jungle and then two days travelling either side.

[00:54:20] Chris: And running that again in 2026?

[00:54:24] Joe: Yeah. So what we're gonna do in 2026 is we're actually gonna go a different route and we're gonna go to a northern route on the northern side of the mountain because there's another little dip in there. And we wanna see if there's any more caves and archaeological sites that side of it. We'll be doing the summit again, and of course we'll take the guests to see these pots. Again, we don't touch them, we just photograph them. We don't trample over anything. But that's the plan. As with all good plans, there is a degree of flexibility in whether it's feasible or not, but we can give it a good go.

[00:55:00] Chris: Yeah. Fantastic. And then what was the cave expedition that you'd done after that? Is it the Makaima cave expedition — petroglyphs and stuff?

[00:55:12] The Cave of Ancient Drawings

[00:55:12] Joe: Yeah, so after Makarapan, we did this scouting trip to a place called Kopinang. Kopinang is sort of located in the far west of the country, almost on the Brazilian border. And it's in the Pakaraima Mountains — think these big tabletop mountains out of Arthur Conan Doyle, Lost World, all that sort of stuff. And we went to Kopinang and we were gonna do an expedition in the area. We were just gonna check out — we were just gonna start engaging with the Patamona community up there. And the Patamona are a really interesting tribe. They're known as the Sky People because they live up in the mountains. And when these early explorers came round, they didn't visit the Patamona much. So really not much is known about them. I would possibly hazard a guess that we were possibly the first people that were taking an interest in the Patamona's archaeology and their heritage. There was a really good project, the Patamona Languages Project, which recorded their language. That was done in the 1970s. But so little, even today, is known about them. And I mean, when you come into these villages, the modern world is there — don't get me wrong, everyone's on Starlink, everyone's on TikTok. It's the modern world. In this day and age, everyone is connected. You engage with people who then tell you about their parents' and grandparents' experiences. We went to see the village toshao again. We had a village meeting about doing tourism in the area. And then we got told — we were actually preparing for another expedition, which we're gonna do at the end of 2026, which I'll touch on at the end. We did all the village meeting and stuff. And then the best thing to do is go to the bar and everyone grabs a few beers and then all of a sudden everyone starts telling you stories and it's amazing. And we had this one guy, and the first thing I noticed about him is his calf muscles were humongous. They were massive. He was just built. I just looked at his calf muscles thinking, "My God, you'd be an amazing rower." He came and told us, "Yeah, I've been up in the mountains, up a mountain called Waka, which is known locally as Cat's Ears because it looks like the cat's ears." And he said, "Just over there, there's this cave with a load of drawings in it." And we're like, "Okay, so how big's the cave?" And he went like that. And the best thing about Amerindians is everything is so understated. So you have no idea. It could be a cave full of the most riches on earth and they'd be like, "Yeah, just a bit of stuff in it." We're like, "Okay, so what's happening here?" And he started telling us this story. And we're like, "So what colour are the drawings?" And he goes, "White." Okay. And then, "Are there any other caves nearby?" And he said, "Yeah, there's this other cave nearby that had these birds in it. A couple of, maybe, I think he said about a hundred years ago, this Dutch guy came and he started eating the birds in the cave," is the local story. And he never came back. And you're thinking, "God, this is gonna be the next COVID or something that comes out of here." But you hear this story and we thought, we have to go and have a look at this. And we put an expedition together. It took about a year of planning and we had some absolutely fantastic people in the village. And I will say, the people at Kopinang were fantastic. The toshao, everyone in the village — they were so keen to get tourism in. How they adapted to it, how they took it on was just incredible. And the organisation that they put in, the logistics that basically got this expedition underway — it was just incredible. We basically got together a team of 10 people with, I think, six indigenous guides from the village of Kopinang. And only one had been there before, and he didn't speak any English. So we were relying on the other Patamona guides to basically translate for him. And it was in September this year that we set off. I think it was another 10-day expedition. I think we were in the jungle for eight or nine days. And the route was difficult. So these Patamona — unlike any other Amerindian tribe — when they move through the jungle, they move. If you think the other Amerindians walk fast, these guys really put down the miles. And it was hard to keep up. And I think possibly the most difficult thing is their concept of time and distance was incredibly different to ours. So you'd say, "How much further is it? How much have we got to walk today?" And they'd be like, "Yeah, about an hour." And their concept of an hour was about 10 hours to our one hour. So there were times where I think me and Anders were looking around like, "Oh my God, we need to stop soon." The first day we were a little bit nervous. We had one guy — he unfortunately got a bit sick, so we made the decision that we should break his bag apart and split all his kit. And he was probably carrying about 25, maybe 30 kilos of kit. It was heavy kit. And we split it up between the guides and some of us and we carried on. So we've already got one person who's not carrying anything. And then by the end of the day, people were tired. We had this sit-down by the fire. Had a meeting with the indigenous guides first, and they were all like, "Okay, day two, we really have to get the miles in. Otherwise we're just not gonna make it." So we had to sit down and I think I learned quite a valuable lesson that night. I was like — by this point I was working for The Wild Tales and they sort of put me as an assistant leader. And I think I learned quite a valuable lesson. I went into a little bit of Navy mode, and it's a bit cringe, but it was like — I just went, "Okay, right, we need to get this sorted, get this sorted, everyone needs to get moving." And it wasn't the right approach. I think everyone just needed a little bit of, "You're all doing really great, well done." And Anders said it to me himself. It was quite a good life lesson because it was possibly my ambition getting in the way of the expedition. And then I reflected that night and I thought, okay, no, this is not how to do it. That's not the right approach. Which is very valuable for me to learn. And like I said, all these things — the jungle teaches you the hard way. But day two, everyone absolutely smashed it. The guests that we had went up this quite steep mountainside. The Patamona guys were just immense. They would go to the top of the mountain carrying all their kit, and then they'd come back down and they'd be like, "Right, can we take your bag and go up?" And they just didn't stop. So we got to the top of the mountain. We had to cross this ridgeline before we dipped down the other side to where this cave was. I think it was day three or four, just before we got to the cave. Everyone was very tired. Anders was very tired. It was tough terrain. It was a lot of distance. We were walking, I think about 45 kilometres each way. 45 kilometres on regular terrain doesn't sound too bad, but when you're moving 45 kilometres through the jungle, that's some tough going. We were walking at a fast pace. We were tired that day. And again, it was just — every hour: "Are we there?" And the answer was, "Another hour." And you're like, "Oh, okay." And then on I think day four or five, we got to this cave. And I will never forget the initial reaction I had. I was up in front and we had about three or four guests around me — two in front of me, one behind me or something like that. And Anders was with a second group at the back. And we were walking through the jungle, we were walking for about an hour. We'd set up a base camp again. So we were travelling very, very light. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, we just come across this rock. And it's not a cave. It's like this rock with like — it looks like a crown or like a claw with someone's hand. And it's resting on three other massive rocks. And I remember I turned around to Anders and Anders, he just looked at me and just went, "What the hell?" And we were just like, "Oh my God, what have we just found?" And we went inside and underneath this rock, everything was just covered in drawings. And it was drawings — layers of drawings. So you had recent ones where you could still see the human fingerprint with this clay substance that they painted on. And behind it, really, really faint ones where it was really faded but you could just about see it. I think for about the first 10 minutes, nobody spoke. Everyone was just rendered completely speechless. What we had expected to find was maybe this small little cave with a few little drawings in it. We had absolutely no idea it would be this. We were just speechless. And the one guy who had been there before — he'd been growing pineapples up there and you're thinking, "Why are you growing pineapples here?" And he was like, "Yeah, I just came across this cave. And I thought it was quite interesting." And this Amerindian guy — he was insane. He had been bitten by a bushmaster, if anyone knows what a bushmaster is — one of the world's deadliest snakes. He'd been bitten by it. And he was like, "Yeah, I got bitten by a bushmaster. I know, I'll walk home and just walk it off." And he did. He said, "Yeah, I got home after two days of walking and then just went to bed." And was like, "Okay, that's fine."

[01:05:17] Chris: Yeah.

[01:05:18] Joe: "How are you still alive?"

[01:05:20] Chris: I mean, the video — I remember the videos on Instagram and I think you sent me the picture of that, didn't you, Joe? And it almost looks like a man-made structure. It looks like someone's constructed something, but it's in the middle of nowhere.

[01:05:36] Joe: I don't know. If anyone's listening and they're a geologist or an archaeologist and you know something about how rocks are formed, because you look at this structure and your first instinct is it's man-made, right?

[01:05:49] Chris: Yep. Or has it been carved or something? Who knows. Yeah. I mean, it's impressive. It must have been — I can't even imagine what it was like just coming across that in such dense forest in the middle of nowhere.

[01:06:11] Joe: Yeah. It was just — there are no words to describe it. It really isn't. It's like, you could grow up playing Tomb Raider and never dream of finding something like this. And you're sat there and you're just in awe. Looking at these — and okay, the first thing is you're just completely taken aback. And it was absolutely fantastic that the guy that got us there, who knew where it was before — he just sat in the corner and he was just smiling. Everyone else was just like, "Oh my God." Including the younger Patamona guides. Everyone was just on the same level of complete awe. And I just took one look at him and he was just sat in the corner and you could just tell he was dead proud. He was like, "I got everyone in. I found this."

[01:06:55] Chris: So rolling right back to this expedition — were you on the hunt for petroglyphs or was this just a chance encounter that led to that? How did it come to be?

[01:07:06] Joe: So as I said, we had the scouting trip and we heard the story. This is why we formulated this one. But we had — I think we have a realistic approach. We didn't know the extent of what we'd find here. We thought, okay, we've seen the petroglyphs on the Cassai Chi. We know there are some petroglyphs in a similar area in Guyana that have been painted on a rock. So these things are possible, but we didn't expect what we found. And I mean, if you see the pictures on social media and stuff — these are very strange drawings. I think the first reaction is you could probably say they look like frogs. And that's quite interesting because the primary diet of the indigenous on the mountain are these mountain — they call it mountain chicken. And it's these big frogs that they eat. And what they'll do is dig a pit and fill it with water and they'll shoot them with a bow and arrow. I mean, we ate frogs on the trip. And they taste like chicken. They really do.

[01:08:16] So we were thinking, okay, so the frogs are obviously playing some sort of big part in what's going on here. And then there's a couple of other drawings where there is this one sort of frog-looking human figure and you could tell they had two breasts and female genital parts painted onto it and then it looked like something was coming out. So we're thinking, okay, maybe there's some sort of fertility thing going on here. Maybe some people gave birth in this cave and they're documenting it or something like that. The reality is we just don't know. We have no idea what this means and the context of why this cave is here. So the Patamona came back to the village and the Patamona guys, they said some of their grandparents had spoken about another one of these tribal wars where the Arekuna tribe from the Venezuela/Guyana border would come into the Patamona villages and raid them. And they said close to Kopinang, there's actually what they call a battlefield where they had these big pits in the ground. And what the Patamona used to do is they used to hide in these pits and ambush them with stone axes as they moved through. And stone axe heads and stone arrowheads have been found. And we think that maybe Makaima was another one of these refuges. But we also think that it's on a route that goes towards the Potaro River. So is it that there's a series of these sort of rest stations — camps, essentially — that you would use to get to the Potaro River, which is your main lifeline to getting around? And even the guy said there is another cave across the other side of the creek. We just didn't have time to get to it.

[01:09:57] Chris: So that's got to be another expedition, surely.

[01:10:00] Joe: Exactly. Yeah, we've got to go.

[01:10:03] Chris: Wow. That is fascinating. Whether it is a place of refuge or a waypoint or something like that. Quick question — were there any similarities in the drawings or the styles of the iconography between what you've seen with the Wai Wai versus the Patamona?

[01:10:22] Joe: Yeah, I would actually say there is. This stick man figure tends to be the same — like if you were to look at Pictish drawings in Scotland, they all follow the same sort of artistic mode, I guess. They all follow a style. And it would — I would say it was all like this sort of stick man drawing style. You get a lot of these circles and twirl sort of just strange line drawings. But I don't think anywhere else, maybe in a site close to it, has really that concentration of that many drawings in one area. And again, I don't think the cave is man-made. I think nature does some crazy things, and I think this is just one of them. I think if you were an indigenous people and you were moving through the area, you'd stumble across this rock and go, "Huh, this is pretty special. Maybe this is created by a higher power or something." And you would then put the drawings in it — not carve it, the drawings were already there. If you know what I mean.

[01:11:28] Chris: Yeah. I mean, that is a very strong possibility because they worship gods and things like that. So it may have been seen as a sign or a gift or something like that. Picking up on something — did you say something about graffiti or something in these areas? Whether something was vandalised in some of those areas? Or am I making that up? Did you see vandalism beside some of these petroglyphs?

[01:11:57] Joe: Yeah. So sadly — and this is quite a big thing that we'd emphasise — we're not discovering these sites. We're the first outsiders to document them. That's all. The indigenous have known about these sites for generations. They've discovered them. They've known about it this whole time. And there was, on one of the walls, some graffiti — modern graffiti that had already been carried out. So it brought up a debate. And I think there'd be two sides to this. One is, 50% of people would say, "You need to keep this place secret so nobody else finds it and nobody else vandalises it." And the other 50% would say, "No, you need to raise awareness of it so that it can be monitored. It can be properly looked after. The village can have an education programme so that people understand the significance of these sites and they don't go and vandalise it." So it's a very difficult one to say what is the right approach. I sit with the fact that I think education is the most important. The more, as The Wild Tales, as guests, as the indigenous people — we can spread what we're finding and raise awareness of it. The more attention's given to it and the better protection it has. Now, sometimes that could also lead to vandalism. There are bad people in the world that would just do stupid things. I hope that never happens with any of these sites in Guyana, and that everyone respects them for what they are, like we have, and is equally amazed by them. But I think with doing this, it does become quite a big degree of responsibility about how we talk about it and how we address it. Especially as outsiders. It's for the indigenous to decide. It's not us. We were simply guests there and we were very honoured guests, is what I'd say. It was the guys that got us there. It's the guys — the indigenous at Kopinang. It's the village of Kopinang. It belongs to them, not us. We were just lucky enough that they had us along.

[01:13:54] Chris: No, and I think — I mean, I subscribe to that, responsible access. I sit in the same camp, Joe. It's responsible access and raising awareness. I think it was said at the start — my recent trip when I was in Utah, I went to see some petroglyphs in the desert, and part of that was vandalised. Someone had inscribed their name. And I didn't really realise at the time. I put a video clip up about it and someone dropped me a message. When I went to look up the name, someone had pointed me to a news article. It was someone in 1850 or something like that that had vandalised it. So it wasn't necessarily a new thing. These petroglyphs had been around for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. But someone in 1850 had decided to vandalise it. And now that's still there to this present day, alongside these indigenous artworks. So yeah, that is frustrating and it kind of tarnishes it a little bit. Responsible conservation. Yeah, there are idiots in the world, but I think hopefully the value and awareness that this can bring to understanding history — that outweighs some of the negatives. What kind of attention is that getting from maybe the University of Georgetown? Are they interested in that?

[01:15:24] Joe: Yeah, they're very interested. There has been potentially a little bit of talk going around of doing an excavation of the site. This really grabbed Guyana's attention in such a positive way. The reaction we had from this was fantastic. We came back to Georgetown and there was — every year they have Amerindian Heritage Month and we were walking through some of their heritage festivals and people were going, "Oh my God, you're the cave guys!" And you're thinking, no, no, it's not us. Give the guys credit. It's the Patamona. But I was so glad that it was met with such an incredibly positive response. And again, I think everyone understood — like you said — the message we're trying to put out here is that we all want the same thing. We all want the site and the indigenous culture to be protected and recognised and just enjoyed by everyone in the country and the wider world. It's how can this discovery change people's lives and benefit them? It's just everything's positive, which is good.

[01:16:33] Chris: Are you carving a bit of a niche — pun intended — into the cave and archaeological side of things?

[01:16:41] Joe: Yeah, it's a real niche. I think as niches go, that's probably the most niche thing you could have ever gone for. You wanna do tourism? Yeah. How about archaeological jungle tourism?

[01:16:54] Chris: Yeah. No, it's fascinating because it's all the unknowns and, as you say, surmising and theorising. But the fact that in this day and age, there's not a lot of places on the planet that are uncharted or undiscovered — or rediscovered, rather, should I say. But it's fascinating that it's still happening today in this modern world. You see that you come to these villages and people are still on TikTok. And you mentioned Lucy — I had a very brief chat with Lucy Shepherd. Not that long ago. And she mentioned somewhere out in far-flung Africa, people have got mobile phones and are on TikTok and things like that. But to still come across archaeological sites like this that haven't been — you know, they haven't been touched. Yeah, it's mind-blowing, it really is.

[01:17:46] Joe: Yeah, totally.

[01:17:49] Uncharted Territory & Future Plans

[01:17:49] Chris: So what does the future hold for you and The Wild Tales in forthcoming expeditions — on the hunt for new routes or locations or caves or whatever it may be?

[01:18:03] Joe: So we've got some really exciting things planned for 2026. We've got a Wai Wai trip, which we're hopefully running. We've got the Makarapan trip, as we mentioned. There's gonna be a lot of jungle survival courses, which I'm sure people who listen to Anders' podcast will find out all about, or check out the YouTube channel. But we've got — we sort of run a signature expedition every year is the idea. So next year, in November 2026, we're gonna be going to an area that we originally went to Kopinang for, to find out about this expedition. And this is the original reason why we did that little scouting trip. There's a waterfall close by — kind of close by. This waterfall was visited 90 years ago by two British geologists and a load of Amerindians, who unfortunately don't get the recognition they deserve from that time period. But they measured the waterfall and they think it's possibly higher than Kaieteur Falls in terms of flow and volume going over it, and the fact it's a single drop. So we're gonna do an expedition where guests can join. We're basically going to measure this waterfall and we're gonna go see if it is higher, if it's a single drop. And there is no guarantee we can even get to it. This is gonna be ridiculously tough. We were looking at the route going in and we're going up this river system into these gorges. We have to climb this mountain to get to the top of the falls. And we're gonna try and bring some laser rangefinders. We're gonna do some good old-fashioned trigonometry. So I'm thinking, back to my GCSEs in maths — "How do you actually measure a triangle again?" I never thought I'd need this. And now all of a sudden — you know, you have those exams where you're like, "Yeah, so-and-so needs to measure the height of this waterfall." And you're like, "What is this rubbish?" And actually, no, I need it. That's gonna be wild. I think this is gonna be a long one. 17 days. I think we're planning a mixture of river travel initially, and then a lot of overland. And the story behind it is fantastic. I think it is one that is truly amazing. I'd love to tell you more, but I also don't wanna spoil it.

[01:20:31] Chris: Yeah, yeah.

[01:20:34] Joe: But in 2027 as well, we've got some really interesting — we're gonna start doing some canoe adventures. These are sort of Canadian-style canoe down some of the river systems, very much focused on wildlife. And the idea behind those is not everyone can do the hardcore overland ones and some people don't want to. And it's understanding that you need to make the jungle accessible for everyone. You can't just have people coming in and then — the best thing you could do is make the jungle open so that everyone can enjoy it. And these canoe ones are designed to be like, you know, we'll sort of do your camp a little bit for you. It's a bit more luxury, a bit more chilled. And you can go there and experience everything you experience in the jungle, but you don't have to necessarily worry about walking 20 kilometres a day and doing that sort of stuff. And I think that would be really popular with people. And I'm really looking forward to that one because it's also nice to just chill out and enjoy a good bit of time with some guests sharing stories and things.

[01:21:41] Chris: I mean, that could serve as a gateway for the longer expeditions for a lot of people as well.

[01:21:47] Joe: Exactly. Yeah. And in 2027 as well, we've got an expedition which I'm hopefully leading on my own — climbing Cat's Ears mountain. So where that cave is, we're gonna be climbing the tepui. It sort of towers above it.

[01:22:07] Chris: Is that like a hike or is it a proper roped, technical climb?

[01:22:12] Joe: No, we think it's gonna be a trek. We think there is a route at the back of it that the indigenous have said. And whether there is or not — I mean, all of these, like all good expeditions, yes, there is room for failure.

[01:22:26] Chris: I've seen — it was a few years back, I think. It was the House of Gods, maybe. I'm sure it was Matt Pycroft, Leo Houlding, maybe — climbing one of the tepuis. And from what I recall of the footage, it was just slime and mud.

[01:22:49] Joe: Yeah.

[01:22:50] Chris: It just looked like a horrible climb. Trek. Expedition. Tough as old boots.

[01:22:59] Joe: Sounds fun, right?

[01:23:01] Chris: Well, isn't an adventure unless there's almost tears? Or regret. Fantastic, Joe. I mean, we could talk all day, but we've been on for an hour and a half already.

[01:23:14] Joe: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:23:15] Chris: It's fantastic.

[01:23:17] Closing Traditions

[01:23:17] Chris: So let's move into the closing traditions if you're okay with that?

[01:23:22] Joe: Yep. Yep.

[01:23:23] Chris: Of which there are three — pay it forward, call to adventure, and then some quick-fire fun. I've got 10 questions here. So if we start with pay it forward. An opportunity to raise awareness for a charity or a project or anything you might be passionate about — Guyana or otherwise. So what would you say is a pay-it-forward recommendation?

[01:23:44] Joe: It's actually a charity that I was only exposed to two weeks ago when I was with Anders. We were just doing some scouting in Guyana for new trips — the canoe trips specifically. And it's the South Rupununi Conservation Society. There's a load of good people down in Lethem and on the various ranches that are really trying to promote education about conservation in the Rupununi — this big savannah area. So they have a lot of different projects and I was googling a lot of it while I was there. And they're trying to launch projects with red siskins, giant anteaters, the yellow-spotted giant river turtle. And they're really focusing on kids — kids local in Guyana — to understand the significance of it. And I just thought, it's amazing that people are doing that and people really care about it. And I think the best thing they need is more people to visit, more people that understand it, more people that pay into the tourism industry there and visit the Rupununi and these sort of things. It's a great project to get behind. They're just a small group of people doing some really good stuff in Guyana.

[01:25:00] Chris: Yeah. Fantastic. What was the name again? Just repeat that.

[01:25:03] Joe: It's the South Rupununi Conservation Society. So SRCS.

[01:25:08] Chris: Okay. We'll get that linked in the show notes as well. Excellent, thank you. And then next, a call to adventure. So a place, an activity or something to recommend to listeners or viewers to get them inspired or active.

[01:25:22] Joe: Come to the jungle.

[01:25:24] Chris: Yes. Simply. Yeah.

[01:25:27] Joe: The jungle is accessible. Don't — I think people have got a lot of misconceptions. You don't need to be superhuman. You don't need to have any particular skillset. I came with no skillset. You need nothing.

[01:25:44] Chris: Just a willingness and a desire for adventure.

[01:25:47] Joe: Yeah.

[01:25:48] Chris: Yeah. Excellent. And I think what you said about those canoe trips could be the gateway for the longer expeditions.

[01:25:55] Joe: Very much.

[01:25:56] Chris: So yeah. Let's get people looking and booking onto those as well. Excellent. And then finally, I've got 10 questions — just a quick-fire round that you don't know unless you've listened to a previous episode. Excellent.

[01:26:11] Joe: And I think, yeah, that's quite a good one. There's a lot of situations where that applies, I think.

[01:26:17] Chris: Yeah. And I think just reflecting back on what we discussed, Joe — I think it's quite nice to see someone with a real sense of self-awareness and understanding. That story you told about the camp and wanting to give it the whole Navy thing and realising it wasn't the right thing at the right time. And learning from that. I mean, that's what it takes to be a leader in those types of environments. So that was quite nice to hear. And that's us. We've navigated, in the short time that we've had, quite a bit of Guyana and the archaeological findings, which has been absolutely fascinating. And I'm sure I'm gonna link a lot of this in the show notes and when I get this published, link out to some of those stories as well. Because I think there's a real opportunity for people to research and go down the rabbit hole. It's been fantastic. Thank you.

[01:27:12] Joe: No, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to have spoken about it with you and everything. So yeah, thank you very much.

[01:27:19] Chris: Yeah, and thank you and everyone at The Wild Tales, and Anders and everyone else and all these people. I seem to know them from afar — Lionel, people I haven't actually met. But yeah, just thanks to everybody for the work that you guys are doing. It's a fantastic opportunity for people to really go and immerse themselves, and that's what this show is all about. So thank you, Joe.

[01:27:40] Joe: Yeah, no, I just also like to say thank you to Anders and the Patamona guys. I mean, without Anders giving me this opportunity, I wouldn't even be here. So I really do owe him. He's done some fantastic stuff in Guyana with The Wild Tales, and so did his predecessors. Without either of them, this would just not be possible.

[01:28:00] Chris: Yeah, you're here. Excellent. And with that, we'll bring it to a close.

[01:28:06] Joe: Cool. Thank you.

[01:28:09] Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to today's episode. For the show notes and further information, please visit adventurediaries.com/podcast. And finally, we hope to have inspired you to take action and plan your next adventure, big or small, because sometimes we all need a little adventure to cleanse that bitter taste of life from the soul. Until next time, have fun and keep paying it forward.