SBS - Wildest Latin America (2013) Part 3 Venezuela The Treasures of El Dorado. 28/03/2013 19:15:27

Wildest Latin America

Through beautiful photography and the extraordinary stories of the animals and people that live there, this series celebrates Latin America’s most iconic and dramatic locations. It’s taken millions of years for animals to adapt to places as different as the high Andes and the sweltering Amazon; the windblown Patagonian steppe and the swamps of Venezuela. The result is an incredible diversity of species – from army ants to armadillos, jaguars to giant otters. Each has developed a unique way to stay alive; yet each must fit in to a complex jigsaw of life. We reveal the extraordinary behaviors and adaptations that are key to survival and success. People have had far less time to carve out a living, yet with ingenuity and determination, they too have found ways to make the most of what the continent has to offer. Incredible lifestyles continue to this day. We follow individual hunters and fishermen as they demonstrate the skills of their people. And we unveil the strange, sometimes painful rituals that determine the identity of Latin America’s diverse people. Each program ties together the latest revelations about life in this continent of extremes. These stories combine to give a fascinating, exciting and in-depth understanding of Latin America’s most spectacular places.

Part 3: Venezuela the Treasures of El Dorado

Venezuela is famous for its “Lost Worlds” – foreboding mountains, huge swamps, and impenetrable jungles - all seemingly cut off in space and time. Yet each is linked, by the waters of a mighty river: The Orinoco, the rumoured route to El Dorado – the legendary city of gold. Following the explorers’ journey up the Orinoco from mouth to source, we discover a delta haunted by pumas and festooned with Scarlet Ibis; a river that’s home to South America’s largest predator, the Orinoco Crocodile; Los Llanos – the swampy realm of the world’s largest rodent and its numerous predators; Mount Roraima – the spectacular flat-top mountain that inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and Pixar’s movie Up; and the tropical jungle home of hallucinating shamans and tarantula-hunters.

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