The real Lara Croft’s hunt for cursed gold
She is a pioneering adventurer with a global reputation for keeping her head and surviving in the most perilous situations. Yet Megan Hine tells JAMES RAMPTON that her latest challenge, to hunt down the lost cities of the Amazon, was maybe her most danger
MANY call the adventurer and survival expert Megan Hine the real-life Lara Croft. Her fellow explorer Bear Grylls, meanwhile, has described her as, “tougher than 99 per cent of the men I know”.
It’s not hard to see why.
The 37-year-old crams more death-defying adventure into one day than us mere mortals would manage in 20 lifetimes.
For instance, she is talking to the Sunday Express from Iceland, where she and her partner, the singlehanded sailor James Aiken, have just skied across the country in a mere 18 days.
Megan, as open and friendly as she is courageous and resourceful, plucks an example of her daredevil life out of the air. “I was in Kenya in 2017 when the big drought was happening, and I ended up getting caught in the crossfire between two warring tribes. I was just finishing up rigging a rope bridge across this gorge and that’s when I noticed a load of crocodiles popping up and down in the water below.
“Then suddenly, gunfire erupted around me. It was like something out of a movie. So I dove into a little cleft in the cliff face as bullets ricocheted off the rock around me.
“I was thinking, ‘I’m being shot at.why am I being shot at?’
“I was able to slide down this steep cliff. I did a kind of run/swim across the river, hoping one of those crocodiles wasn’t going to eat me, then climbed up the other side.”
She has also been bitten by a snake, stalked by a pack of ravenous lions in Namibia, partially paralysed by Lyme disease and chased for four hours through the jungles of Thailand by a gang of illegal opium growers armed with AK-47S.
Since graduating to guiding in the British mountains at the age of 17, Megan’s career has been characterised by adventure.
Able to trap fish with her bare hands and start a fire with a single tampon, Megan has led hundreds of expeditions around the globe.
Growing up in Malvern where, “I was encouraged to get outside as much as possible – falling out of trees, getting muddy,” she has lived with various cut-off communities, including the San bushmen in Namibia, the Sami reindeer herders
in the Arctic and the Iban jungledwellers in Borneo.after acting as a survival consultant on Bear’s shows for many years – she has been dubbed, “the woman who helps keep Bear Grylls alive”.
She also operates behind the scenes, helping celebrities safely negotiate the wild.
Meghan’s ability to retain a cool head in the most petrifying situations came in very handy on her first foreign expedition to Namibia to work with the San bushmen.
She was stung twice by a deadly scorpion that dropped out of a tent she was loading into the back of a Land Rover.
Megan, a psychology graduate who in 2017 authored the bestselling book “Mind of a Survivor”, takes up the story.
“It was so incredibly painful. It was like being stung by a bee, but hundreds of times worse.
“So I walked calmly over to my boss and told him I’d been stung twice. He didn’t believe me to start with. He said, ‘You’re far too calm!’ But fortunately we had medics with us and they put me on to intravenous anti-histamine.
“The next day, after I’d been pumped full of all this anti-histamine, it was my turn to go and hunt for dinner.
“I had a rifle and was up a tree with a San bushman waiting for warthogs by this watering hole.”
At the same time, “one of our clients was sitting on the branch below. But because of the drugs, I was nodding off. I was just absolutely terrified that I was going to fall asleep or – worse still – fall out of the tree and shoot my client on the way down. But fortunately that didn’t happen.”
Megan’s latest adventure is perhaps her most dangerous yet.
For centuries the world’s greatest explorers have been tantalised by finding two legendary, treasureladen cities,akakor andakahim.
Buried deep in the Amazon, they are rumoured to contain mighty hoards of gold.
In the 1980s, tempted by the prospect of untold riches, three different expeditions set off.
One by one they appeared to vanish off the face of the earth.
For years, the chief suspect was a mysterious river guide known as Tatunca Nara.
He is the only person who says he knows the secret route to these enigmatic ancient sites. He was also the man who led each of the lost groups into the jungle.
Now, a six-person team of international investigators, bolstered by Megan’s expertise in survival, have been brought together to try to deduce what became of the expeditions and find out whether Akakor and Akahim really exist.
The results of their hazardous search have been made into a new six-part documentary Curse Of
The Lost Amazon Gold. Megan explains: “There were legends about alien interventions and stories which tied in with the Nazis.
“It was just this fantastical story which blew my mind.
“Quite early on the story took a darker twist when we realised we were conducting a murder investigation. [Watch the series to find out more…] The whole thing was an absolutely incredible and very humbling experience.”
Recalling one incident from the expedition, she continues: “I was going down this 1,000ft waterfall, trying to see the entrance to a cave. Rappelling down that with fixed ropes in water is so dangerous because if you get stuck in the current, you’re pretty screwed.
“As I was about halfway down, the wind changed direction and started circulating. Suddenly tons of water were cascading on to me.
“That was a super sketchy situation to be in. Suddenly I felt very tiny and insignificant.”
But that was not the only disturbing situation she confronted in the remotest Amazon: “You have got the human element as well.
“At times, we had armed guards on the boats because there’s a lot of piracy going on in these areas.
“People go missing. There are ‘uncontacted tribes’ who don’t want you there. It’d be very easy to just vanish.”
Megan reflects on what motivates people to go on such risky expeditions: “I think there’s an inherent need in all of us for answers, adventure, excitement.
“The way we live now is not how we evolved to live.we’re still stuck in our caveman mind-set. The need for adventure, the need to experience fear and risk, is inherent within us.
“I think this is why we have quite a lot of issues with anxiety, depression, and obesity. It can all be linked back to our ancestral roots and how we used to live”.
Over the years Megan has helped many celebrities through scary moments in the wilderness.
“Kate Winslet was amazing. We flew her to the top of a mountain in Snowdonia, super-exposed and really high up, and she had to go straight into a rappel. I was standing right next to her at the top and could see the absolute terror in her eyes.
“But the moment she was ready to go, I just saw something in her eyes switch. For the rest of the show it was like she had stepped into another character and just put her faith in the process. It was absolutely incredible.”
Could Kate be the next Lara Croft, then? “Yes, absolutely!”
So how does Megan react to being likened to the fictional allaction adventurer from Tomb Raider? “I think it’s really funny and really flattering. But it’s also a shame Lara is the only female character we get compared to.
“However, things are changing slowly and the face of adventure is starting to diversify.”
In the meantime, Megan is planning more daring expeditions with James. “It’s important in any relationship that you have an understanding about what drives the other person. I feel fortunate to have found that in somebody.”
Finally, does Megan envisage a moment – in 50 years’ time, say – when she will slow down and open a teashop in the Lake District? “I don’t think there’ll be a tea shop,” she smiles. “The adventures will just keep going.”
Curse of the Lost Amazon Gold is on Blaze, Sundays, 7pm