by Josh Gates
Outside, the land is still and endless. I can see the stars wheeling and a thick band of the Milky Way gashing across the dome of sky. This one moment justifies all that has come before.
The reward for the effort required to reach the ends of the earth is often the simple satisfaction of being there by yourself. People seldom travel beyond civilization. It’s a pity, since being alone in these barren destinations makes us feel our surroundings so acutely. When we can stand in the solitary presence of something magnificent, the obligation of sharing the experience evaporates, and we are free to truly be a part of it. Though we are insignificant in comparison, rarely in these moments do we feel overwhelmed. It’s not about power. Whatever energy makes up this awe-inspiring world is the same stuff that courses inside all of us. These are the moments that reconnect us to our innate dignity.
I slowly close my eyes, reflecting on my position and imagining a bird’s-eye view of our tents receding skyward as the panorama widens. I can see the last white smoke from the chimney rise up, and the desert around us stretching for more than a thousand miles. My mind’s eye backs all the way up through the clouds as the curvature of the continent comes into frame. Ulaanbaatar, Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo, lit up like so many suns. And with the earth now in full frame, I can still imagine our little tents, countless miles below, perched in the empty expanse. I open my eyes. I’m shaking cold but alive. Utterly alive.
CASE FILE: PHANTOM FELINES
NAMES: Alien Big Cats, Mngwa, Blue Mountains Panther, Gippsland Big Cat, Tantanoola Tiger, Tasmanian tiger, Beast of Dartmoor.
DESCRIPTION: These are mysterious, predatory cats believed to be both intelligent and elusive, as evidenced by their ability to survive almost undetected. They can be separated into three categories: known living animals, true cryptozoological creatures, and those considered extinct.
LOCATIONS: England, Western Europe, East Africa, Australia, Tasmania, Papua New Guinea.
STATUS: Contrary to the name, Alien Big Cats are not felines from outer space that have come here to conduct anal probes. They are rogue animals that purportedly migrated beyond their original habitats and survived in anonymity for generations. In England, a growing number of citizens are adamant that uncataloged “ABCs” roam free across the countryside. Bolstered by hundreds of sightings, compelling photo and video evidence, and scores of unexplained livestock maulings, proponents of the existence of these colossal cats continue to pressure the media and government to investigate.
In the case of the Mngwa in East Africa, the animal is rumored to be an undiscovered species that has somehow avoided being captured, killed, or documented. Many reports of this animal describe it as similar to a lion or leopard but larger, and covered with gray striped fur. The creature has mystified Western explorers for years. But to local tribesmen, it is simply an additional resident in the rich and deadly African menagerie.
The Tasmanian tiger (or thylacine) isn’t actually a feline at all; it’s a marsupial. The connection comes from its dark stripes and elongated tail, which are reminiscent of a big cat’s. For thousands of years, this animal roamed the sprawling jungles of Australia, Tasmania, and Papua New Guinea. But after the introduction of aggressive species like the dingo and ruthless bounty hunting, the creature was eventually driven to the brink. On September 7, 1936, the last known thylacine died in captivity, a victim of careless neglect. In the decades since its demise, hundreds of eyewitness sightings have accumulated, and some believe that this predator is still alive, hidden deep in the jungles of Tasmania. Consider this creature the Elvis Presley of cryptozoology.
VERDICT: In terms of Europe’s Alien Big Cats, I think the case is far from closed. Since large feline predators have been both captured and killed in rural England, some of these cats may be escapees from private breeders. It’s very possible that fugitive kitties still linger in rural areas.
Having personally searched for the Mngwa, I’m not overly confident that it’s about to pounce out of the tall grass anytime soon. A beast this ferocious is unlikely to spend his existence as a hermit. The Mngwa may simply be an oddly colored leopard or just a misidentified lion.
Reports of the Tasmanian tiger are enticing. While I’d be thrilled to learn that the species has prevailed, I think it’s more probable that we won’t see its kind again. Furthermore, without strict conservation efforts, other species like the thylacine will continue to vanish at alarming rates.
10: The Delicate Art of Not Getting Killed
* * *
Halong Bay, Vietnam, 2007
* * *
Halong Bay is a dreamscape. Endless emerald waters punctured by hundreds of limestone towers rising up like bony fingers from the deep. In a place this mysterious and enchanting, it’s easy to understand how people could believe in a fantastical sea creature.
We’ve come to search for Vietnam’s version of Nessie. Extracting the zoology from the mythology is one of the most challenging aspects of making Destination Truth, and this case is about as tough as it gets. Vietnam’s history is laden with rich and imaginative folklore, including the elegant notion that a dragon descended from the heavens, his tail splitting the earth to form the jagged towers in the waters of Halong Bay. Even the name “Halong” means “where the dragon meets the sea.” An alternate version has the dragon spitting out jewels, which formed the many islands here. Either way, these people have serpents on the brain, and reliable accounts are hard to come by.
Our boat, a massive wooden live-aboard on its maiden voyage, steams steadily between the monolithic karsts, a dragon’s head rather appropriately carved into the prow. On deck, we set up cameras and equipment, prep dive gear, and scan the horizon. I glance back over the stern and furrow my brow at the sun, which is dropping like a heavy marble in the western sky.
Without warning, a series of hits on our sonar system sends us scrambling to get wet. Tapping the glass on the pressure gauge of my scuba regulator, I look down into the water, which I can already tell is going to be murky as hell.
My father spent the lion’s share of his career as a commercial deep-sea diver, and I was tinkering with scuba tanks, weight belts, and wetsuits as far back as I can remember. Add to that a childhood by the sea in New England, and nautical exploits were something of a foregone conclusion for me. I’ve been diving since I was about ten years old, so young that after completing the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) open-water diving course I didn’t qualify for a certification card. My earliest dives were icy shore excursions in Massachusetts, where the water perpetually feels like it drifted down from the Arctic Circle. My best friend Jon and I would don thick wetsuits to search for sunken treasure and undersea intrigue along the coast of Cape Ann.
One day, inspired by my father, I even tried to build a submarine out of a box fan and a metal firewood rack. Needless to say, my personal Nautilus suffered an inglorious end, promptly disassembling and sinking at her modest launching ceremony. Even at the age of twelve, Jon wasn’t one to pull punches as we watched my Vernian contraption gurgle to the bottom of the bay. “Idiot,” he quietly muttered. Little did either of us know that professional sea monster hunting would end up on my résumé.
Jumping into Halong Bay feels like a bad idea from the start. The dire reminder from the director of the zoological museum that these waters are populated with venomous sea snakes engages me in a mental battle as I imagine what exactly triggered the sonar beneath the boat. Visions of tentacles dance in my head. It doesn’t help that we’ve got limited control over our environment, with curious boats recklessly swinging by to get a better look at what we’re up to. It’s not exactly an ideal dive profile.
Casey and I jump down into the warm waters and are immediately engulfed in a blinding broth of mud and silt.
We try to get our bearings, but the fact of the matter is that neither of us can see jack shit. After a few minutes of blind disorientation, we clumsily feel our way to the stern and ascend to reassess the situation.
The ensuing drama unfolds quickly and is only partially documented by our cameras. The drag is being generated by the propellers of a behemoth ship that has drifted toward our position, churning the surrounding waters. The current drags both Casey and me along the surface and toward a rusting mooring nearby bobbing violently and threatening to smash our skulls. Despite kicking wildly, we’re being pulled underwater and into the tangle of metal and chain that is now listing violently toward our heads. Casey and I choke in the turbulent waters and wave our arms frantically. Our teammates quickly bound up to the highest point of our boat, issuing a flurry of screams to alert the vessel, which promptly shuts down her engines. It’s over quickly, and Casey and I are hauled back onto the deck, exhausted and shaken.
This isn’t my last brush with catastrophe while making Destination Truth. Rather, it’s merely the opening act in a cabaret of close calls, all in the name of exploration. I’m not saying that making D.T. is dangerous; it’s not, per se. It’s just that when you go out of your way to find adventure, sometimes adventure tries to bite you on the ass. The key is figuring out how to walk away in one piece.
I’m not talking about survival skills. That’s not my domain. If you want to learn how to drink your own pee, eat maggots, and sleep inside animal carcasses, you need to talk to Bear Grylls. Incidentally, a few years ago, Bear took some heat for sleeping in hotels while his show depicted him as roughing it outdoors. Bear and I have never met, but I will say this to his group of small but vocal detractors: When was the last time you received a black belt in karate, survived a free-fall parachute accident, and became the youngest Englishman to summit Everest? Jesus. What’s a guy got to do to get a little respect?
Oh, and his name is Bear. As in, “I’m a bear. I will eat your goddamned face off.”
No, my tips for cheating death are entirely more accessible. Little nuggets of advice learned the hard way. In the case of our Vietnamese dive trip, Casey and I would have wound up as fish food in Halong Bay if not for the fast thinking (and loud swearing) help of our colleagues. The incident is a reminder of a lesson best vocalized by the Beatles: I get by with a little help from my friends. Never travel with people you aren’t willing to depend on. Remember that.
Additional words of wisdom are hereby presented in a series of unfortunate parables.
Machine gun to the face: Senegal
* * *
Okay, this was my bad. I drove our crew across the border from Gambia on a bit of crummy advice from a local. I’m a shameless country-counter, and I wanted to get a toe into Senegal so that I could add one more to my irrelevant list of visited nations (yes, a toe counts). I was told that a dirt road off the main highway would lead us to a sleepy Senegalese village with no border patrol whatsoever. Once again: no border patrol whatsoever. A few miles later we round a sharp bend to see a group of soldiers jumping to attention. One of them drops down into a foxhole and swings a .50 caliber machine gun toward my head. Another guard quickly loads an AK-47.
Calamities like this resolve in milliseconds; there is no room for trial and error, no second rounds of negotiation. History tells us that the delineation between those who survive disaster and those who do not is very often drawn by one’s ability to make sound decisions in the face of acute danger, and do it quickly. You get it right, or you get dead.
1. Get your bearings. People frequently report the sensation of time slowing down during moments of disaster. This phenomenon may be caused, in part, by a rapid acceleration of the brain’s processing of vital information. Use this momentary heightening of awareness to take a snapshot. What do you see? In my case: running soldiers. Panicked expressions. Guns. A narrow road.
2. Fight or flight. This phrase, coined nearly a century ago, refers to an animal’s snap judgment to engage or wuss out when faced with conflict. Make no mistake: running away is usually the right decision at least half the time. Being a dead adventurer is, in my humble opinion, overrated. You can always run away and embellish your bravery later. However, running away under the wrong circumstances can be more disastrous than standing your ground. In this particular instance, the nearly overwhelming instinct to flee would be a terrible mistake. The guards are on the defensive, and trying to evade them would only confirm us as a threat. Also, my ability to turn the car around on this dirt path is no match for a few fully automatic machine guns.
3. Make a move. One of the biggest mistakes people make in high-pressure situations is to simply do nothing at all. To freeze. It’s important to commit to a decision. In this case, my instincts tell me that the smart money is on defusing the situation as quickly as possible. I stop the car, put my hands in the air to illustrate my utter defenselessness, and smile. Big smile. Smiling helps 90 percent of armed conflicts. Proven fact. So I do my best to stand there like a grinning American idiot (not difficult). Because if there’s one thing that people around the world can get behind, it’s feeling superior to Americans. Especially people who speak French. Oh, they love it.
We’re marched out of the car at gunpoint. I don’t speak three words of French, but I manage to understand that these gentlemen would like to see our passports. We produce them slowly and just keep on smiling.
In the end, with the temperature of the situation much cooler, the guards realize that my ragtag pack of monster hunters is a threat to national security; they send us back from whence we came. As I start up the jeep, I point to the ground and ask the guard, “Is this The Gambia or Senegal?”
He looks up with a smirk. “You are in Senegal.”
Perfect. Country number seventy-eight.
Lesson: Make decisions calmly, quickly, and accurately.
Black hole of death: Chile
* * *
Descend into a centuries-old mine to search for an alien entity believed to live in subterranean darkness. You know. Just another Tuesday. In my head, the mine was going to be something I could simply walk into. Maybe a thick-timbered arch and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad tracks leading into a dusky tunnel. Definitely horizontal. Not this. This is the scariest damn thing I’ve ever seen. A slumping pit in the middle of Chile’s Atacama Desert that dates back to the time of the Conquistadores. Various splintered logs and heavy burlap bags are struggling to restrain the sandy embankments, and I can’t even get close enough to look down the hole. It’s essentially the Sarlacc Pit in Return of the Jedi (before Lucas went back and ruined it with that potted plant).
According to a local source, this particular shaft should be about sixty feet deep, allowing us to rappel down inside and access the maze of tunnels below. When climbing, our policy is to rig redundancy lines for each climber. One line allows an individual to self-descend. A second line is controlled from the top in the event that the climber releases his primary line.
Our director of photography, Evan, and I are going to lead the group. Evan goes first so that he can film me from below. He lowers himself down, using about half the length of his rope, and then yells up for me to begin. I can tell from the timbre of his voice that he’s nervous, which is a very bad sign. Evan is a longtime D.T. veteran who surfs, climbs, scuba dives, and is generally up for just about any insane activity I throw his way. In all his seasons of making the show, this is the only time I’ve ever heard genuine fear in his voice. Hooked in, I back toward the rim of the pit and gaze down into a void. Evan is hard to see hanging only fifty feet underneath me. I rappel down about thirty feet. Small rocks hail down and bounce off of Evan’s helmet and into the darkness. He calls up at me: “Something’s wrong, dude.”
I look between my dangling legs and see the flicker of his headlamp below me. “What?” I yell down.
“It’s too deep. Listen to the rocks.”
I dislodge a small stone from the wall and let it drop from my hand. It sails past Evan and into the nothi
ngness. Silence. The rope creaks. More silence. Evan shines his light down hopelessly. The sound of the rock hitting the bottom is so distant, so small, that it immediately turns my stomach over. This mine shaft is hundreds of feet deep.
This is a problem. A big problem. First of all, our ropes are only 100 feet long. What concerns me more is that the rigging at the surface doesn’t offer enough leverage to pull us back up. We were planning on resetting the lines from the bottom. Now we’re screwed; we have to go back up. I try to use a device called an ascender to hoist myself up the line, but the walls are sheer; there aren’t any footholds. I kick off the wall a few times with a grunt before giving up, spinning quietly in the void. Evan and I yell up to the team at the surface that we’re stuck. After what feels like an eternity, they call down that they want to hoist Evan up first, since the position of his rigging makes it easier. Great. Inch by inch Evan rises up toward me. Though I can’t hear or see what’s happening at the surface, I know that the team is digging their heels into the ground in a gravitational tug-of-war. It’s laborious and slow work. Eventually, Evan and I are eye to eye. There isn’t much to be said. We put our hands on each other’s shoulders as he begins to pass upward. “Get me out of here,” I whisper.
Night sets in just as Evan clears the top of the shaft. I can no longer tell where the mine ends and the sky begins. I’m in utter and complete blackness. “Josh!” Evan calls down from above. “They need to re-rig your safety line and add some pulleys for leverage. DO NOT let go of your other rope.”
