What do you think about this?
In 1820, as revolution swept toward the city of Lima in Peru, the Spanish authorities panicked. To keep their vast church treasure out of rebel hands, gold, silver, jewels, and a life sized golden statue of the Virgin Mary, they loaded it aboard a British trading ship called the Mary Dear and entrusted it to her captain, William Thompson.
It was a fatal mistake. Out at sea, Thompson and his crew reportedly cut the throats of the Spanish guards, threw them overboard, and turned pirate. They are said to have sailed to Cocos Island, a jungle covered rock in the Pacific off the coast of Costa Rica, and buried the entire fortune there. Thompson was later captured, but he never revealed the location, and he died with the secret.
Ever since, Cocos Island has drawn treasure hunters like almost no other place on Earth. Hundreds of expeditions have combed it, including one backed by a future president of the United States. Not one has ever produced the Treasure of Lima. The island is now a protected national park, and digging for it is forbidden.
Is it possible that a king’s ransom in Spanish gold has sat undisturbed in that jungle for two hundred years, guarded by nothing but bad maps and thick roots?
Long since quietly dug up, or still buried somewhere on that island? What do you think happened to the Treasure of Lima?
