Some months laters, only the half are left of the 4,000 Spaniards and the Indio sherpas. Pizarro’s expedition gets stuck at the offset of the rain forest. No European had ever reached this point yet. All food is gone, going back is impossible and the greed for gold changes into the will to survive. Out of despair the Spaniards decides to build a caravel in Rio Coca, in the middle of the rain forest, in order to continue the journey on the river.

While Pizarro is in total fever delirium, the young, aristocratic and liberal Francisco de Orellana takes control and sets off with 61 other people to get help. But the vessel „Victoria“ will never make it back to base camp. It dips into an incredible journey over the Amazons. The priest of the caravel, Gaspar de Carvajal, writes in his diary about beheaded people and terrible, naked female warriors, the Amazons.

In 2003 the Dutch naturalist Dr. Marc van Roosmalen sails on the research boat Calibella over the Rio Aripuana, one of the endless tributaries of the Amazons. TIME magazine declared Roosmalen as one of the „Heroes of the planet“. The primatologist has discovered more than new animal species over the last twenty years – and that caused lots of trouble with the Brazilian authorities. Marc van Roosmalen is an offcial scientist of the prestigeous Research Institute IMPA. But police bullies him whenever possible because he is trying to buy large regions of the rain forest with European donations and transform them in protected areas. This is not a good way to make friends in one of the most corrupt countries in South America.