Thirty-eight years ago, former diver Dion De Souza and a ‘sailor’ were lost in the forested and wet highlands of the Cuyuni/Mazaruni region without food and shelter. They may have stumbled on the source of the Wakawakapu Creek, where no man may have gone before, while trekking for six nights and seven days from Ekereku River to Mazaruni River.
On the 38th anniversary, De Souza, 66, whose ordeal was never published before, recently related to Stabroek Weekend at his home in Cabucalli, Santa Rosa Village, Moruca, Region One, how at 29 years he responded to “a (gold) shout” and was subsequently lost in the jungle trying to find the location of the mining camp owned by Garth Doly, a Jamaican-American whose dredge was in Ekereku River, in the vicinity of Sakaika Falls, closer to the mouth of the Cuyuni River.