As a child of 12, growing up in Peru, Ruzo’s grandfather told him a most unusual story, dating back to when the Spanish conquistadors had killed the last Inca emperor. The conquistadors, hungry for gold, headed deep into the Amazon rainforest in search of their fortunes.
But very few of the Spaniards would return alive. Those few that made it out of the jungle talked of a “waking nightmare,” of giant man-eating snakes, poisoned water, starvation, and disease, and “a river that boils from below, as if lit by a great fire.”
Finding the legendary boiling river
Even though Ruzo had been fascinated by his grandfather’s tale since childhood, it wasn’t until he was working on his Ph.D. project on the geothermal energy potential in Peru at Southern Methodist University in Texas, that he began to wonder if the river was real. He decided if it was real, he wanted to find it, reported Gizmodo.
Ruzo asked everyone, so it seemed. “I asked colleagues from universities, the government, oil, gas and mining companies, and the answer was a unanimous no. And this makes sense. You see, boiling rivers do exist in the world, but they’re generally associated with volcanoes. You need a powerful heat source to produce such a large geothermal manifestation.”
Over the holidays, Ruzo went home and during dinner one night, he asked his family about the legendary boiling river. His mother surprised him by saying not only did the river exist, it was real and she and his aunt had actually swum in it.
Ruzo initially thought the idea of a river that boiled was ridiculous, because, after all, there were no volcanoes in that particular part of Peru. But despite his skepticism, in 2011, he hiked into the Amazon jungle, guided by his aunt, and far from the nearest volcano.
The Shanay-timpishka River
He fully expected to find the “warm stream of the Amazon,” but what he found was astonishing. Before his eyes was a four-mile long river of boiling water, the sacred geothermal healing site of the Asháninka people in Mayantuyacu.
Ruzo couldn’t believe his eyes. “When I saw this, I immediately grabbed for my thermometer,” said Ruzo in a TED talk back in 2014. “The average temperature in the river was 86 degrees Celsius, not quite boiling but definitely close enough … It’s not a legend.”
At its widest, the Shanay-timpishka is 82 feet (25 meters), and about 20 feet (six meters) deep. The river’s ancient name is loosely translated to mean, “boiled with the heat of the sun.” and Ruzo found that its water begins to feel painful to the skin at 117ºF. The river has a protector, of sorts. He is Maestro Juan, an Asháninka healer and the long-time protector of the river.
Steep cliffs cloak the river in many places and together with the thick jungle can make navigation difficult for the unwary. Maestro Juan told Ruzo to “use his feet like eyes,” in moving from the river and from rock to rock. At its source, the river’s water is cool, but as the water flows, it mixes with water thrust up from fault-fed hot springs.
When rain falls in the area, it gathers into the sedentary rocks. As it moves through the rock, it heats up from the geothermal heat of the Earth, and on eventually reaching across a large thrust fault, or crack. it falls behind the crack where it is thrust up as hot water to rise along the fault-line and eventually surface as a hot or warm spring.
Parts of the river are so hot that an animal falling in the water dies quickly. “I’ve seen all sorts of animals fall in, and what’s shocking to me, is the process is pretty much the same,” said Ruzo. “So they fall in and the first thing to go are the eyes. Eyes, apparently, cook very quickly.”
“They turn this milky-white color. The stream is carrying them. They’re trying to swim out, but their meat is cooking on the bone because it’s so hot. So they’re losing power, losing power, until finally they get to a point where hot water goes into their mouths and they cook from the inside out.”
Saving the boiling river
Ruzo is surprised that the river has escaped scientific scrutiny, but he is on a mission to change all that. In his book, The Boiling River: Adventure and Discovery in the Amazon, not only does he publicize the river, but he describes the illegal logging, energy developers, and the poor treatment of the indigenous tribes in the area.
Ruzo wants the river to be protected for posterity, as a reminder, the river is a natural wonder that won’t be around for long unless we do something about it. As Ruzo puts it, “The planet’s gotten small, and natural wonders like this are few and far between.”
So how were his mother and aunt able to swim in the river? After an exceedingly heavy rain, the hot water of the river is diluted enough, for a short time, that someone can swim in its waters.
