Uncovering Amazonia's Treasure

I had found it. I'd really found it.

*This* was what Isabela had been looking for for weeks now, and she'd dragged me along to find it. She wanted me to film her finding it. She wanted to be famous. I didn't have the heart to say no, though, because I liked her. Liked *both* of them, I supposed, when you got down to it, but who could blame me for that?

We were in the Amazon rainforest; a *hot* Amazon rainforest. It was actually pretty cool back home in Lisbon so long as you weren't wearing the same clothes you'd worn in the jungle, but we were in a different climate now, and all we were wearing were tank tops and shorts.

Isabela was standing with her hands on her hips as she glanced at the map she'd drawn in the mud with a stick before turning to look at me. "It's this way."

I followed after her, giving her my best smile as I pulled out the camera and turned it on. "Really? That's great! How do you know?"

"See the markings?" she asked excitedly, pointing to a series of markings on a tree that looked like they'd been made by a knife rather than carved into it deliberately. "That's where we need to go! This is going to be incredible!"

I smiled as I focused on filming her face and then panned across our surroundings - the trees, the waterfalls, the snakes - everything about this place was amazing, and I wished there was someone else here with us to appreciate it all with us. "Incredible," I agreed with a smile. "How far is it from here?"

She checked her map again before replying. "Not too far," she said encouragingly. "I think we should pick up the pace a little bit - we're running out of time."

"What do you mean?"

She shrugged as she hurried forward through an opening in the trees that led towards another clearing. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can be done with this and head back home."

"I thought you were going to make us stay out here until we'd found what we were looking for."

"I did say that," she admitted sheepishly, "but... well... we've been out here for days now and there's nothing here except some snakes and bugs and that one waterfall over there." She pointed ahead of us where indeed there was another waterfall - or perhaps more like a small river flowing over several natural terraces - but it didn't look *that* impressive from where I was standing looking at it through the gap between two trees that had been pushed together by nature over time; just like everything else in this forest.

"Well..." I shrugged helplessly as I turned off my camera and dropped it back into my bag so that I could continue following after her. Her words hadn't really surprised me; Isabela had always been impatient, always wanting to rush ahead without stopping to appreciate what was around us until after she'd taken something valuable away from nature itself. It's why she liked treasure hunting so much: because of its potential for quick results. Maybe I should have tried getting her into archaeology instead... not that anyone would have believed that any more than they believed my excuse for being here with her today: *filming*. *Professional* video footage of ruins uncovered in places like this could fetch millions on YouTube alone if you did it right...