“Let me tell you a story”, Charles Brewer-Carias fixes me with cool eyes and an enigmatic smile disguised by a moustache which looks like it has fought its way off the pages of The Dangerous Book for Boys.

With 27 species of flora and fauna bearing his name and over 200 expeditions to the Venezuelan jungle under his no-nonsense belt, Charles is something of a legend in the world of exploration.  He speaks six languages, holds the world record for making fire with sticks (2.7 seconds), has his own brand of hunting knife, has discovered the world’s largest quartzite cave and the world’s oldest living organism, he’s a national swimming champion, former Minister for Youth and Sport and a qualified dentist to boot. To compare him to Indiana Jones is to do him a disservice.

Charles’s day commences in the gym of the Caracas Country Club, where he completes a routine of 80 pull-ups, 80 tricep dips and 80 press-ups before breakfast. Lynn had the enviable task of assessing his pectorals which bounce on demand. He took us back to his home in the mountains above Caracas where we sparred, in the conversational sense, my ability to ask questions outmatched by his ability to tell stories. He is indefatigable. And at the age of 71, living proof that age is nothing more than a state of mind.

His study is a catacomb of books, the writings of Humboldt, encyclopaedias of Venezuelan wildlife and manuals on knifecraft. Earlier in the day he had been taking photographs of mosquitoes as they sucked blood from his fingers and close at hand stood a chemistry laboratory clamp holding a branch in position for photographing deadly ants. 

Sitting at his desk in front of a gigantic iMac he tells us that he is an anachronism, better suited to the nineteenth century - a century of explorers and discoverers - than our own. He disdains the current trend towards specialism, “what happens if there is a nuclear holocaust?” Few people would have the preparation to survive following such a crisis. And Charles is all about preparation. 

He is a generalist, an encyclopaedist, a discoverer in the vein of Wallace, Darwin or Spruce. And it is the immense joy of sharing his discoveries that motivates him. “You cannot discover something alone”, he says “in the moment you share a thing, it becomes a discovery. And when you share a thing you must say it with poetry”.

In discussing El Dorado he is at his most poetic. 

El Dorado was the tribal chief who covered himself in gold dust and ruled over the legendary Lost City of Gold, Manoa.  Imagined as a place, El Dorado has eluded explorers since the days of the conquistadors.  Charles claims to have found it while relieving himself in the jungle. 

His evidence, a pot flecked with gold and his word that his discovery corresponds to the maps and journals of fellow bounty hunters such as Sir Walter Raleigh. Rumoured to lie on fabled Lake Parime, Charles says that he has found the lake which has now dried up. But he’s not divulging any more detail than that, and he’s certainly not going to mount an expedition to El Dorado while Chavez remains in power. “Life under Chavez is like living in a black hole”, he says. 

As it seems likely that I’ll be short of a job quite soon I have volunteered my services for this expedition to El Dorado. I may lack Charles’s intensity of training, he learnt to hike with barbed wire round his legs and stones in his boots, but I make up for it with a quixotic passion for tall tales of adventure. And this is the greatest adventure on earth.

Yunek, Venezuela.  Photograph by Charles Brewer-Carias.