A team from Dundee is to embark on an expedition to the Amazon jungle next month to seek a legendary Incan city of gold.
The adventure is the brainchild of project leader Ken Gawne, a psychology student at Dundee University who created a stir when he made The Treasure Of The Templars, a tribute film featuring Indiana Jones.
Now he hopes to don the Jones mantle himself as well as make a documentary of the team’s adventure in South America as they hunt for Paititi, where, legend has it, the Incas hid their treasures from the Spanish conquistadors.
Ken said the plan started to form during a discussion with experienced expedition leader Ian Gardiner, who is based in Norfolk.
He said, “Basically Ian said one of the things he would like to do before he was 30 was to go to the jungle to find the lost city.
“I asked him if he was serious about it and took it from there.”
Also on the expedition is writer Ken Halfpenny.
Born in Dundee, he was raised in Portsmouth as his father was in the Royal Navy but returned to the city of his birth to study at Abertay University and stayed on after graduating.
A chance introduction to Ken led to him signing up for the adventure.
“Ken was already involved in organising the expedition and he suggested I come along,” he said.
“I became really interested really quickly because it is a very exciting idea and a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”
The fourth member of the team is cameraman Lewis Knight from Broughty Ferry, and they also hope to be joined by German archaeologist Jens Notroff.
They will leave at the end of August to spend three weeks hunting for the lost city in the jungles of Peru.
Despite the relatively short period of time, Ken is upbeat about their chance of success.
“We have spoken to a previous explorer Gregory Deyermenjian, who has been looking for the city for 20 years and he has been fantastic,” he said.
“He has found about 15 different settlements so we will be looking in an area where previous things have been discovered.”
He added, “When you are in the jungle it is very dense and as far as you can see is what has been explored so I think we have as much chance of finding something as anybody.”
The expedition plans to take a satellite phone so that the team can update their followers with live tweets and Facebook updates from the Amazon, he added.The expedition team are running a ‘Jungle Island Discs’ competition to win an iPod Shuffle at their website.