Although the full extent of this network of underground tunnels may never be known, there are grounds for believing that it extended far into the interior, perhaps as far as the Amazon Basin in Brazil.<\/p>\n
In 1681, a Jesuit missionary named Fray Lucero wrote about the information that had been given to him by Indians in the Rio Huallagu area of northeastern Peru. They told him that the lost city of Gran Paititi lay behind the forests and mountains east of Cuzco. The Jesuit wrote:<\/p>\n
“This empire of Gran Paytite has bearded, white Indians. The nation called Curveros, these Indians told me, dwell in a place called Yurachuasi or the ‘white house.’ For king, they have a descendant of the Inca Tupac Amaru, who with 40,000 Peruvians, fled far away into the forests, before the face of the conquistadors of Francisco Pizarro’s day in AD 1533.”<\/em><\/p>\n “He took with him a rich treasure, and the Castilians who pursued him fought each other in the forests, leaving the savage Chuncho Indios, who watched their internecine struggles, to kill off the wounded and shoot the survivors with arrows. I myself have been shown plates of gold and half-moons and ear-rings of gold that have come from this mysterious nation<\/em>.”<\/p>\n This story is independently documented in the book “Amazonas y El Maranon<\/em>” by Fray Manuel Rodriguez, published in 1684, according to the author Harold Wilkins.<\/p>\n But whether or not the tunnels located in Peru actually extend as far as the Brazilian interior, there is certainly evidence of an opening to an underground tunnel that begins in Brazil, not far from Rio de Janeiro, and travels many hundreds of miles towards the mountains in the west.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Although the full extent of this network of underground tunnels may never be known, there are grounds for believing that it extended far into the interior, perhaps as far as the Amazon Basin in Brazil. In 1681, a Jesuit missionary named Fray Lucero wrote about the information that had been given to him by Indians […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-tunnels-of-the-andes"],"yoast_head":"\n