Notes on Dec. 2003 flight over the heights of the Vilcabamba Mountain range

In 1963 National Geographic financed an expedition to the Vilcabamba mountain range. Its best result was the discovery of the beautiful "Parodi lake", located at an approximated altitude of 3800 meters above sea level.
After camping next to the lake, the expeditionary group commanded by G. Brooks Baekeland and Peter R. Gimbel went through the Eastern slope of the mountain range following the Picha river. One of the objectives of the expedition was to look for vestiges of the mythical city "Vilcabamba" or "the Golden City" that had been object of the unruly ambitions of the Spanish conquerors. They didn't find any, so they reached the conclusion that there was no reason to think that this inhospitable region had ever been inhabited by human beings.

Nevertheless, examining a LandSat satellite image on top of which we have painted in blue some of its main lakes on the basis of official hydrographic data (click here to see the full image and a zoom onto the lakes), we have come to think that the conclusions of the Baekeland expedition may have been somewhat premature.

On the basis of this and other information, we decided to organize a flight over the zone in December 2003. Unfortunately the climate was not very propitious for obtaining excellent images, but in between dense clouds at least some nice pictures of landscapes were obtained. These were similar to National Geographic's photos around lake Parodi, with abundance of typical high mountain pastures ("ichu") and trees of medium size. In this gallery we are reproducing some of the best photos obtained in this flight.

It is interesting to see in three of these photos a group of many layered lagoons, as water terraces that are very peculiar. They could be indications that contradict the conclusions of that National Geographic expedition.

The photos were taken by Antonio Gómez, Joel Rivera and Jorge Gómez.
The flight was made in a Cessna plane of the company "Alas de Esperanza," piloted by Enrique Tante.