I paid a dollar per page to get color copies.
SYNNOTT: And I read that article and I photocopied it. But before any of that, in the late ’80s, he saw an article about tepuis in National Geographic. He’s been on climbing expeditions all over the planet from Pakistan to the Arctic Circle. GWIN: Mark Synnott is an all-star in the mountaineering world. MARK SYNNOTT (WRITER): I am a climber, adventurer, sailor, writer, storyteller. But in order to get to some of these unexplored parts of the world, he needs the help of people like Mark Synnott. It’s what he calls alpha-level science: making discoveries of new species and their way of life. GWIN: Bruce Means is the type of researcher who needs to be out in the wilderness to do his work. GWIN: OK, let’s go to tepuis, right after the break. MEANS: If you really want to study some interesting evolutionary activity and some ancient stocks of organisms, go to tepuis. He was traveling to the tepuis on a quest for his own kind of El Dorado: undiscovered species of frogs that would reveal a new chapter of life in the rainforest. This week, we follow scientist Bruce Means. GWIN: I’m Peter Gwin, editor at large at National Geographic magazine, and you’re listening to Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world. They are special, wonderful, remote, beautiful places on this planet that give me as much-what would you say?-euphoria as I have ever gotten from any place I’ve ever been, and I’ve been to a lot of them. MEANS: My word for tepuis is phantasmagorical. But it’s easy to see why he thought something fantastical-maybe even impossible-was somewhere among these strange mountains. GWIN: Sir Walter Raleigh never found a city of gold. And then in a few minutes, (whispers) it’s quiet again. Then it starts raining and the rain comes down, just like (growls) the rain in the tropics can come down-like somebody pouring a bucket on a tin roof. And at night in a hammock, when it’s cloudy and there’s no moon and it’s completely dark, it’s pretty wonderful. MEANS: It causes me to do what I’m doing-to shut up and just listen to the silence. GWIN: Bruce Means is a biologist who has been studying ecosystems like this for more than 35 years.
But it-a lot of people think that’s eerie. He’d heard rumors that it was a “mountain of crystal.” But he had to turn back before reaching the mountain because the rainy season had started and his group was running low on supplies.Įven today, getting to the base of a tepui is an enormous undertaking.īRUCE MEANS (HERPETOLOGIST): When you’re in a cloud forest, it’s often (whispers) completely quiet.
In 1595, while on a quest to find El Dorado,Įnglish explorer Sir Walter Raleigh was probably the first European to see a tepui, off in the distance. These mountains are known as tepuis and are ringed by giant waterfalls which shoot out from their sides. In the Guiana Highlands, a remote region of South American rainforest, flat mountains with vertical walls rise high above the forest canopy, poking into the clouds. PETER GWIN (HOST): El Dorado, the legendary city covered in gold, doesn’t seem like a place that could really exist, but then neither do tepuis. Listen on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, and Amazon Music.