Start with the truth, because the story got away from this place. In the 1960s a Hungarian named János Móricz said he had found shelves of yellow metal down here holding hundreds of huge golden books. His own wife said she never believed him. In 1976 a 100-strong expedition went in, led by the Scot Stan Hall, with British and Ecuadorian troops and the astronaut Neil Armstrong, and found no library. The archaeological consensus is that it was a hoax. What is actually here is better than the story: Ecuador’s longest cave, 4.6 km of it, entered by a 70 metre vertical shaft, with passages that genuinely look cut and polished, burials dating to 1500 BCE, and a sump at the bottom. It is named for the tayos, oilbirds, that nest inside; Shuar people go down on vine ladders in season to take the fat fledglings. Morona-Santiago.
Ecuador
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