In 1541, two survivors of an expedition in Patagonia told they had found a lost city in the middle of the Andes: the temples of this city
were solid gold and its streets were paved with gold. Its inhabitants lived in idleness, and knew the secret of eternal youth.
This patagonian Eldorado was called city of the Caesars, Wandering City, or Trapalanda. Trapalanda was searched for a long time.
Numerous expeditions went in search of the mythical city.
In 1923, a Dr. Wolf discovered a wall 150 meters long and 12 meters high in the mountains of Monte Zeballos, west of the argentinian province of Santa Cruz.
The news spread in the newspapers of America : Trapalanda had been found, at last. But the great wall of the monte Zeballos proved to be a mere volcanic formation:
erosion alone had cut the stone, not the people of Trapalanda. Behind the high walls of basalt: no Eldorado.
Magnetized by this utopia, this nowhere called Patagonia, blank space on maps on which are projected dreams and fantasies,
I also went to the monte Zeballos in search of these walls - a trip to a both real and nonexistent place, in the country of Eldorado...
