How It All Goes Down
Into the Amazon
- Before going to the Amazon, Fawcett is enlisted by the British government to be a Moroccan spy.
- Chatting with Moroccan officials, Fawcett works his way into the royal court to spy on the sultan.
- Fawcett returns to England without incident. Mission: Impossible, this isn't.
- Back in foggy London, Fawcett attracts the attention of George Taubman Goldie, the president of the Royal Geographic Society.
- Goldie recruits Fawcett to map the border between Bolivia and Brazil.
- Fawcett says yes. He believes this is his destiny.
- Off Fawcett goes in 1906, leaving behind his pregnant wife and three-year-old son.
- With a surveyor named Arthur John Chivers, Fawcett descends the Andes toward the jungle.
- The altitude sickness is rough, especially for the mules, who sometimes fall right over the cliffs.
- The dudes eventually abandon their pack animals and continue alone.
- Fawcett and Chivers travel from one isolated little town to another, shocked at how the rubber industry treats the native people.
- Many indigenous people are forced into slavery by rubber barons.
- Fawcett and his men scour nearly six hundred miles of jungle, battling electric eels, piranhas, and anacondas.
- Worse than the big creatures are the little critters: gnats, millipedes, worms, and mosquitoes.
- Many of Fawcett's men get sick with yellow fever or malaria.
- To top it all off, some of the Amazon tribes, like the Guayaki, are known to be cannibals.
- On one memorable night, Fawcett and his men must flee downriver from "savages" (8.39) throwing spears.
- In 1907, Fawcett, who appears to be impervious to snakes, spears, and diseases, emerges victorious from the jungle. And he did it a year ahead of schedule.
- Someone get this guy to edit James Cameron's next film.