I Would Walk 3,000 Miles: The Epic Jungle Journey of Isabel Godin

busting out this table and all this elaborate equipment. Anyway, fast forward, I'm now like sitting on the couch with the microphone on the coffee table. You're in the other room. We just got a long chord to separate us. I'll take out the echo in post. It's just like we used to put so much, and I think we just learned. It's kind of been nice to reflect on how much we've learned. I can't do anything for two years and not get better at it, I hope, right. I have

listened to some early episodes and we've changed. We've come along. Yeah, we've come along way, yeah, but like in a good way. I mean, I thought we did a really good job on the show started. But it is nice to know that like we didn't say good enough and stay there? Yeah, totally. You know, so men cleaning up around the house a little bit? Who wants an original Lord of the Rings collectors set of as dispensers? Because I look it up, you know, I've we've had this sitting on our shelf

for a long time. Listen, it's got a layer of dust on top of that box. And I'll tell you I looked it up on eBay and they're going for upwards of twelve dollars. So how much it was a gift? Thank you very much. It was in my stocking one year. I bet it was thirty dollars. I mean, I don't know. It was like I remember seeing him at CVS. Oh they're probably nine, okay, t ninety nine. I don't know. There's like what twelve characters in there? Is it the

entire fellow? Yeah, I guess that's nine, isn't it? Famously? But yeah, there's a Gollum too. I feel like they left somebody ten. I should have it in front of me and then I could accurately describe it, But instead it's over there on the other side of the room. Because it's going in the first store box right child will be very happy. Pet As is still in there. And I don't think Pez can expire. I think Pez will be on this earth long after we're all gone.

It'll be Pez and cockroaches, yes, all alone, living in harmony, happy as clams. Well, anyway, let's get to the story. It cares about Pez, right, um, Pez, we are open to a sponsorship at any time. This story was suggested by Simon chingweti one on Twitter, and he also suggested Amy Bach, which is one of my favorite stories about the sweetest con woman in the world, So please go check that episode out and Simon delivered again with this

suggestion as well. Um, today we are talking about Isabelle and Jean gordends DNA, who were married in seventeen forty one and then separated for over twenty years. And Isabel's incredible and harrowing journey to get back to her husband's stuff that epics are made of. So let's hear all about her tracks through the Amazon jungle to reunite with the love of her life. Yeah, let's go pay their French conlistion. Well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell.

There's no matchmaking. All romantic tips it's just about ridiculous relationshifts. A lover might be any type of person at all, an abstract cons at a concrete wall. But if there's a story where the second clans ridiculous romans a production of iHeartRadio. Isabel was born in real Bamba in the Spanish Vice Royalty of Peru, which is now Ecuador in South America, and her father was the wealthy Don Pedro

grandmaisonn Bruno, a government administrator. Isabel was well educated. She spoke fluent Wrench and Spanish as well as Quechua, the indigenous language Okay, and she was also quite a looker. She had like fair skin, black hair, totally pretty. If that's your thing, If that's your thing. Jean Godem des Audonnay was a cartographer and he had been attached to

the world's first Geodesi expedition. He was working under Charles Marie de la Condamine, and they intended to find out how big around the Earth was by measuring the equator and probably doing a lot of complicated maths that I can't tell you about. Geodesi in general is like the science of measuring the fundamental properties of the Earth, like its shape, and its orientation and space cool and gravity.

Yeah that's cool. So Jean must have been I mean pretty brave, right, kind of courageous because members of expeditions like this, in exploration groups and stuff, they often die, you know, because they're going to places they're not you know, used to the climate. They might not he supplied heavily. There's nobody there to help them. It's kind of a big gamble because it pays off. You're like enshrined in history, and if it doesn't, like, you know, you don't get

back to write your books. So nobody ever hears about it. You're enshrined in a dirt nap, right, So yeah, I mean I think he had probably some fantastic courage within him. Jean was also a naturalist. He was very interested in observing and recording the flora and fauna of the Amazon as well. So he was kind of doing two science things at once, okay. And he arrived in Rio Bamba

in seventeen thirty five. At some point he met Isabelle and they fell in love and got married in seventeen forty one, when Isabelle was fourteen years old and Jean was twenty eight. Oh, I mean it's not the best stage gap literally twice. Not great. This girl's age not great, not great. But I get seventeen thirty five, seventy a different time, different time. Although Real Bomba sounds like the most fun town, Oh my god on the PLANETBA No, right, I just want to dance. I hope they have cool

parties and they have to. All you have to say is it's a real bumba party and it's and you've got a great party. I'm coming now. In seventeen forty four, their expedition ended. In fact, this expedition it got a little roasted by Voltaire. He wrote, quote in dull distant places, you suffered to prove what Newton knew without having to move. They're like trying to prove laws of gravity and the

circumference of the earth and stuff. And they're like, Isaac Newton figured that out with a pen and paper, all right, And you're like cast out of editions, right, and y'all run around and Real Bomba. I didn't know Voltaire was such a ship poster. Oh my god. Apparently he was a major jerk. Sometimes it was a real troll. Well he knew, you know, attention is currency that was fultaire

originally quote quote voltaire, attention is currency. So after this expedition ended, La Condemine and the rest of the team headed back to France, but Jean stayed in Rio Bamba with his wife, his young two young and he continued to collect plant life and make observations about the wildlife. The man just couldn't give up his passions. Isabel was a wealthy heiress, so having married her, Jean now had the money that he needed to live comfortably and fund

his natural science studies. Isabel did get pregnant a few times, but none of the children survived infancy. Finally, in seventeen forty nine, Jean heard that his father had died back in France, so he decided it was time to head home. To get to France, Jean would first have to go to French Guiana on the opposite coast of South America

to make preparations and arrangements. This trip would take at least one or two years tops, and Isabel was pregnant at the time that he left, so he kissed her goodbye to wait for him again, just for up to two years, just for him to make arrangements for them to go to France. Took a long time to get to Europe from South America. I mean, it took you a year just to make your plans right. You left home, and you had to mean that shit right, So just

turn it around. Isabel's like, okay, well I'm pregnant, so you go make those arrangements and I'll make our baby right. You get back, the three of us will go to France. Now, surely, if she had not been pregnant, she probably just would have gone with him. They would have waited in Guiana while he, you know, got got their shit to get right. Absolutely, but I imagine, especially after having lost a few babies, you know, they were like being real careful with this one. Yeah.

So yeah, he is over in Cayenne, in French Guiana, trying to you know, get get the tickets and whatever else you gotta do to get over to France. And then he's like great, dust his hands off, ready to get back and get my wife. But when he tried to go back to Rio Bamba, the Spanish and Portuguese authorities wouldn't not let him cross the border because he was a French citizen, not a particularly important one, you know, because he wasn't attached to an expedition anymore or anything.

He was just some guy and things were kind of politically complicated between these three countries. They did not particularly care that he had family and their territory to get back to. They're just like, you ain't a citizen, yain't coming in. So France, Spain, and Portugal all beef ins, so you can't move around South America for yes, so right. So John was stuck in French Guiana and he tried everything.

He wrote letter after letter to the French government trying to get a passport, only to get stuck in governmental bureaucracy. And of course he also tried to write to Isabel too, but none of his letters ever made it to her, partly because the male roots were insane, partly because of this whatever the beef was between these three countries, because he actually would have to write a letter from French Guiana in South America, put it on a ship to France. It would then have to be put on a Spanish

ship going back to Peru. So he's closer to her, but he's still to send it halfway across the world to get it back over here. Wow, that's so I've had that, you know, where you send a package and it's like, well it went to Oregon first before it went to the next town over, yeah, or some of those layovers. Yeah, and you try to fly to la from Atlanta and they're like, all right, just a quick stopover in Istanbul. Well it saves me seventy five bugs. We'll do it. I'll do it. Can I check it back?

So yeah, these mail routes were very long and circuitous, and also a lot of wars were breaking out around this time, so ships were constantly lost at sea and Jean's letters with them. Jeez, Jean got so desperate that he even started writing letters trying to foment a war between Portugal and France. He's like, if we're gonna do this, let's do it. I'm trying to understand how that would help. Yeah, you know, He's just like, if we got an official war going, maybe the lines using up and I could

just slip through while everyone's distracted. You've got all these soldiers at the border stopping me from crossings. Let me give them something else to do. John was like, I'll grab one at the end and we'll tussle behind the trees. I'll put his hat off, yeah, and then I'll march my way back to Isabel. Like case, like writing letters thinking this will spark a war, which I suppose wars had been started over pettier things. Absolutely, I think many

a letter has started a war problem. Dear King of Portugal, I think you smell King of France, declare war on France immediately. Well. Finally, in seventeen sixty five, Jean's old boss, La Condamine remember him. He wrote a letter to the Portuguese King on Jean's behalf, probably like, hey man, this this old guy here, he's trying to start a war. Now, he's really going through it. Can we get him home,

please say? And the king, who actually wanted to get in good with the French, went ahead and ordered a ship to take Jean back to his wife. He's like, finally, I will give you whatever you want. This is a thirty or galliot which departed from Cayenne in French Guiana, but Jean wasn't on it. See, Jean had talked so much shit about Portugal trying to get a war going, and all these letters is written evidence all over the globe that he was afraid the Portuguese were mad at him.

The whole thing was a trap and the captain of the ship was going to kill him once they got out on the river. So the calliot left without him and sailed down the Amazon River anyway. And they were like, we're supposed to take this guy had show up. We waited the standard five minutes. The uber tells us we have to wait. That's right, you missed your ride, sir by. That makes me think of a good Brooklyn nine, of course, says that's why you always say your insults in person,

no paper trail. You know. We have a hand painted sign on the wall that says it has been zero days since there was no Brooklyn nine nine quotes, and it's just painted permanently because I know it will never change. That's right. So Jean is going through all this, he's writing all these letters, he's trying to get his ass back home to his wife and child, and meanwhile Isabelle is waiting and waiting and waiting. She had moved from Rio Bamba to a smaller town called Guzman, and she

had the baby. It was a daughter, a baby girl, and people were telling her constantly, know, Jean abandoned you he remarried, he died. You know, they were like years or going by. He's not coming back, Honey, you need to get remarried or do something with yourself. But she refused to listen to any of them, and she waited for years. Growing older, she was living mostly in seclusion because women did not go out without a male escort at that time. Of course, her and her family kind

of fell on hard times. Jean had apparently lost a lot of her money in speculation before he had left for French Guiana in the first place, but then her family also lost some wealth and just things were not stable over there, and her and Jehan's only living child had grown into a teenager, but tragically died at nineteen from smallpops. So she never got to meet her father, and Jean never got to meet his mother, so sad and Isabel of course was devastated, but a little hope

was brought to her. There were rumors going around that a boat was waiting on the Amazon River to take Isabel to Jean, which would be the craziest rumor to hear. I have to say that somebody be like, hey, girl, did you know that the Portuguese king sent a thirty or Galio down the river for you, like that would be the weirdest river. What has been happening over there? Jean has been doing something. But of course these are

just rumors, right. So Isabel's father, John Pedro, and Isabel's enslaved servant Joachim and a few others went to see if the ship was actually there. Okay, pretty important to like verify that sort of thing. Now. Two years later, the party returned and told Isabel the good news. Yes, there is a ship, a big ass ship, and it's

ready to take you back to your husband. It was waiting at the closest possible port, which was still three thousand miles away, over the Andean Mountains and through the Amazon basin, so just a short hike through the jungle, right. I also want to point out this was four years after the galliot left French Guiana, so they were waiting for a long time. Yeah, man, it took so long to do anything. Can you imagine like showing up on a boat today and being told, Okay, this is where

you'll be for the whole next presidential cycle. But my god, it does make it. You were years. Imagine the sailors I hope the port was cool because they were there for four years. I know, right, I mean they laying down roots themselves. Like if I'm somewhere for four years, it's probably a wife and kids. It's all happening, the starting whole family. What is this gap on your resume? Well, this ship was indeed ready and waiting for her, and her father Don Pedro had stayed behind at the ship

to make all the arrangements. So Isabelle starts packing her ship and gathering a traveling party together. It was time to take matters into her own hands and get back to her husband's right. But this might have been one of the most ill fated road trips of all time. And we're going to hear all about the terrors and the adventure and the chaos right after this break. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So in seventeen sixty nine, isabel had a team of forty two people ready to

take the arduous journey with her to the Galliote. And it was her her servant Joachim, her ten year old nephew, two of her brothers, three maids, three frenchman, one of whom was a doctor, and thirty two natives who were all there to carry all the stuff. Of course, of course they were like porters, I guess you would call them, and you know, they had quite a lot of stuff,

because this is a very serious trip. Again, we're talking a six month, three thousand mile trip over a mountain range, around an active volcano, through the heart of the jungle, you know, serious shit. Yeah, on an intense Amazon river, you know. But it was also a trip that a lot of people had taken before, right, so kind of like an Appalachian trail. I guess you know, everybody they there's a lot of pointers and blogs you can look at. You know, they carved little stone steps into the path

and trail markers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right. There's a little like flag, you know something. So Isabelle is packing fine China and living. She's packing a bunch of dresses and shoes, you know. Her her brothers insisted that she'd be carried in a sedan chair rather than walk as befit her station. Of course, so it kind of reminds me of like the Oregon Trail. I don't know, if you like, when people left the East Coast, they would bring like pianos, oh yeah, and as they traveled across

the country and it got crazy arduous. He would see other people's nice stuff left on the side of the trail. They would leave pianos and dishes and heirloom firewood. Now okay, yeah, I mean beautiful pendulum clocks whatever. Like. They would leave a lot. They would take with them a lot of their belongings. And it said, if you stand near Chimney Rock and listen carefully at night, you can still hear that grandfather clock chimes day sort of thing in too,

about our flag means death. Yeah, how he had all that, all those books and chandeliers and nice things. So yeah, she's kind of packing, you know, her whole life up. She's effecting maybe to not come back to Riha Bamba. She's like, I gotta bring all my good shit with me. And everyone in her traveling party they all had different reasons for joining her. They weren't just there to like

help her out, you know, escort her or whatever. Because one of her brothers wanted his son, her nephew, to get a European education, so his plan was to actually send the Sun along with Isabelle and Jean to France. Joachim, the servant had been promised his freedom or for joining her on this journey couping her out. The native porters had just been paid handsomely for their services, so that they were like, great, let's go so at any rate. With all their various goals in mind, they set out

in October, ripe and ready for adventure. So Joachim was an enslaved person. Even he wasn't even just like her hired servants, no, exactly. It's strange because a lot of the sources are like, he's an enslaved servant. So I'm assuming they're just trying to maybe just distinguish him as like a maybe a house servant rather than like a fuel hand or something like that. He was like her personal butler type bodyguard sort of guy. But he was someone for whom freedom had to be promised. Freedom had

to be yes, wow, okay, definitely not indentured or something like. Yeah, this wasn't a job he applied for because he's looking for work. Yeah, all right, all right. But she said she would free him. Yeah, she said, help me out, get me to French Guiana. I'll free you when we get there. Well, okay, all right, girl. This very Aladdin and the Genie'd be like, Okay, you're gonna you think you don't want that third wish now, but I'm gonna tell you when it comes to it, that's what you do.

Well he made the Aladdin made the right choice in the end. I hope Isabelle doesn't. Well, we'll see, we'll see. So they set out for this adventure, but their trip hit snags almost immediately. Just nine days into this six month trek, they planned to stop at a mission in Canelos to resupply and get a boat to take them down river. But when they arrived, the village of Canelos had been burned to the ground. It turned out that it had been ravaged by smallpox, and most of the

residents there had died. All thirty two of the native porters that they had hired to carry all their stuff immediately turned around and were like smallpox, nope, bye, and took off into the forest back home, see y'all. And they abandoned isabel and Joachim, her family, the maids, and the frenchmen. All of these guys were just left on

their own good luck. Jean Wilson Murray in her article Surviving the Amazon with Faith and Determination, says that Isabel made the mistake of paying them the full amount ahead of time, so they basically were like, we already got paid and they're smallpox here, so let's go always do half up front half on. Well. Three Kindelo's mission survivors, all natives of the area, were found in the jungle nearby, and they agreed to repair a forty foot canoe for

the travelers and help them navigate the river. They're like, well, our town burned down, so what else we gonna do. That's so true. Now, their original forty two person party was down to only fourteen people, so they all piled their supplies and theirselves into this repaired canoe and they start making their way down the Amazon River, seeing like it's just got duct tape on the side. Okay, they're loading like all these china cabinets into it. It's gotta

be fine. It's definitely gotta be a nice mahogany trunk full of beautiful clothes and stuff. But this river, the river was blooding at this time, and it would rise around ten feet every day, so they're like basically shooting the rapids here in this whole canoe, and the boat capsized. Will pee to leave. And then one day the French doctor's cat fell into the rapids and one of the Canalos natives reached into the rushing waters of the river

to retrieve it, and then fell overboard and drowned. Oh my gosh, how crazy the river was at this time. He got swept away, and how crazy the French were about their hats. I know, I was like, why did he even try. He's like, well, he died a hero's death trying to do the noble thing. I must have my chapool. Truly, he had no other choice. I'll remember his name, Pedro or something, I think. So anyway, they figured out this canoe is just weighed down, right, it's

got too much stuff in it. There's too many people. It's not working. My grandmother gave me that trunk. Well, your grandma, ladies, seventeen hundreds. Your grandmother gave you everything you have, and now it's going to the river. Your grandmother's given the trunk to the river. So anyway, they find the stand bar and they pull, they pull over. They get on the stand bar and they kind of

pull most of the stuff out. They leave some supplies to the doctor and Joakim because those two are going to take the canoe further down the river, find a second ship for the rest of the party, okay, and then Isabelle, her family, the maids, and the Canilos Natives would wait on the sand bar for them to so a classic we need to split up scenario. Yeah, that always works. Two weeks later, there was no sign of the doctor or Joaquin, and isabel and her group were

being beset by biting insects. And we're talking Amazonian biting insects here, okay, so bigger than gregular mosquitoes, prehistoric you know, mosquitoes and bot flies and all these bites were starting to get infected and some of them were not sure exactly who, but likely the Canilos Natives died on the sandbar from infection. The rest of them built their own raft to take down the river. They're like, we can't

stay here anymore. We got to do something, but the raft quickly capsized and most of their remaining supplies went into the water. They were left to continue the journey through the jungle on foot, and bug bites continued to fester and people continued to die. First Isabel's ten year old few and then the Frenchman, then one by one, each of her maids, and finally both of her brothers.

Isabelle was now completely alone in the Amazon rainforest, her entire family dead around her, with no hope of rescue. No one knew where she was God and they do. They point that out in some of the sources, is that they were trying to just follow the river. At the river you know, twists and turns. Yeah, so it wasn't really the most direct route right to where they were going. So they were just kind of wandering and

getting turned around and not knowing where to go. And again they were very worried about food because a lot of the food, edible things are toxic in the rainforest, so they weren't finding a lot of food. It was just a just a horrible situation all around. I mean, Plus, if you aren't familiar the Amazon rainforest, it's pretty dense. There's not a lot of walking paths easily through it, and of course things trying to kill you. Yeah. I actually my fifth grade class but an acre I believe

of the Amazon rainforest. So I would just be down there trying to ask if I could get to that please. I own a piece of it. Excuse me, can you tell me where mister Green's fifth grade classes acre is, because I believe it's around here somewhere, got ben, I own that so well. And keep in mind, like it's some parts of the rainforests are hard to get through. Two days and this is seventeen forty, you know, like her seventeen sixty nine, right, so they had a lot

done as much logging exactly as we have done. Eight days. She just you know, wandering through the thick jungle and then finally gets to an open field and she's like, ah, the McDonald's Gray's lands. Finally, God, well, okay, so Isabelle's all alone, she's wandering around away from the sandbar, right, they have left. Meanwhile, the doctor and Joachim arrived back at the sandbar. They did come back, but all they

found were dead bodies and no trace of Isabelle. So the doctor assumed she had died, and he sold all the belongings that she had left with him, and he started spreading the sad news around about her death, including to her father, Don Pedro and her husband, Jean Goden. Don Pedro of course, was waiting at the boat, right, that's right, and I'm assuming that both of them were like, let's just make sure, like we don't know what. You

didn't see her body, you know what I mean. They must have fought to keep the galliot there after this rumor was going, oh I died. You know, there must have been some conversation with this captain. I mean, these guys are good at holding out hope, right, I mean it's been twenty years already. Yeah, you're not about to turn around at this point. I just think it's incredible because he feels like the captain, especially after waiting four years already. Yeah, they're like, oh she died, you know.

He's like, well, all right, time to turn around. He's probably like somebody finally said it instead. You know, I've been thinking that for a couple of years now. And so Don Pedro was actually with the captain, unlike Johan goodwn right, So Don Pedro must have been the one to really be like, don't you fucking I want to

see her dead body before I'm willing to give up. Yeah. Now, sources do get a little muddled here, but at some point Joachim and the doctor must have split up, because Joachim arrived in some town without Isabel and was actually arrested on suspicion of having murdered her. Oh excuse me, all right, Like he told them, Isabel planned to free

him as a reward for helping around this journey. But I guess authorities must have decided that he killed her or free himself more quickly or something, because they just locked him up. I'm sure they're all a likely story, right, they're not British. British. It's because I'm not going to try my Portuguese accent again. Okay, that's a smart idea. So poor Joachim languishing in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Awful. But of course Isabel was not dead, right,

She's incredibly determined and strong willed. Again, she has not given up by now, she ain't gonna give up. In the jungle, she took off her dead brother's boots and carved them into a pair of sandals, and then she set off through the jungle alone. Now, remember she started this journey as a pretty forty year old matron riding in a sedan chair, carried through the jungle, accompanied with shrunks of jewelry and fine clothes. And now look at

this badass. She's like bit draggled, she's starving. She's got like her clothes all ripped and tattered, so she's wearing a scarf as a shirt, and she was covered in bug bites and parasites. She's probably biting the heads off a little monkeys to survive, you know. It's like punching snakes left and right out of my way, smacking down mosquitos. But though she had she had bought flies on her two and those literally leaved maggots under your skin and

in your gi tracks, so she's not feeling great. She also didn't have a compass, she had no idea which direction she should go, so she just wandered alone for eight days in the rainforest before she finally collapsed, exhausted on the jungle floor. But thankfully she wasn't as alone as she thought she was. And we'll find out how this epic journey ends right after this. Welcome back, everybody to the thrilling conclusion of Isabel's journey through the rainforest.

So Isabel had collapsed and she was close to death at this point, but fortunately she was found by a group of natives who were out hunting, including two women and isabel thought they might kill her because she looked so insane after all her days alone. Again, we kind of described it. She's starving, she's bedraggled, she's dirty. You know, she looks crazy. So she revealed herself. She told them

who she was and what she was doing there. And the native women picked her up, and they took her to their home, which was a nearby mission, and they nursed her back to health. They cleaned her bug bites, they rid her of the bot flies and the other parasites that she had. They gave her food and water and a safe place to sleep. And Isabelle was there for a full month, gaining her strength back. One of her hands was disabled and her hair turned permanently gray,

but she was alive. Yeah, I would imagine that would take a toll on your hair. Oh my god. And I'm wondering what happened to her hand. I mean, maybe one of those monkeys, she was, maybe one of those snakes bite She punched a snake and broke her fingers

and punch. Well, of course, she's so grateful to these women who saved your life that she gave them one of the only nice things that she had left two gold necklaces that she was wearing, and this would have been enough to set these ladies and their families up for life. Fancy these probably these people probably never saw that kind of gold. But guess what. The priests of the mission promptly confiscated the gold and gave the natives about three to four yards of cotton instead. Unbelievable. Oh,

it's practically the same. I feel like three to four yards isn't even enough to make an outfit. No, here's a let me check my pockets. Here a length of yarn. Okay, here you go. Oh, I know, you just got like transformational wealth. I will take that and replace it with some garbage. They tell like, oh, we actually just got news from Europe. Actually no one's using gold anymore, so that's pretty worthless. Why don't we take it off your hands? You know, the real currency of the future is three

to four yards. It's the fabric of our lives. Well, Isabelle finds out about this, and she is furious. She's like, that's that was my gift to these ladies. But she was also very devout, so she felt like she couldn't talk back to the priests. Right, I'm just a woman. What can I do at this point, I'm sure she wanted to be like, oh, excuse me, you did blah. Oh, she's in the shower. She's saying all the things she wants to say, but she can't, having a whole argument

in her head. And then they'd be down in the ground. They'd be saying, I'm so sorry, miss Ensabelle, please forgive me. What can I do for you? Right now? I would be like, I would say, be a better priest, I think about your constituents, flock, and then I would change the world and from then on every would have to be dave different anyway, showers over, we don't have showers here, and now I gotta go just be quiet. I better sit quietly, be seen and not heard. So she's super pissed.

She knows she can't yell these priests, but she could leave, so she did that. The biggest insult is just that I can do is just to walk away. But I'm not saying goodbye, thank you very much. Right, and a couple of the natives there helped her get finally to the waiting Portuguese galliot. Finally only arrived her father's there. Oh my god, I knew it. The captain is like, ooops, I thought she was dead, but here she is. He like punches a hole through his captain's hat. Damn um

he'd been. He put a lot of money on it. I'm guessing the speculation station. This guy put like fifty dubloons. I don't know what they were using. L's yea four years never bet against Isabel. That's why he punched his hat. That's right through well in the month that she'd been recovering with these dative women. Uh, the story of her epic journey that she chared with them had started to

get around. So as the galliot proceeded back towards French Guiana on the east coast, she was apparently recognized and

given grand receptions. Anywhere they stopped, They're like, oh my god, you're the lady from the thing that cool story we heard, right, lady was punching snakes, which I kind of love because, like the rumors all throughout this story, you can kind of see a big game of telephone you played all through a whole country, and it just like, I don't know, to me, it just brings people to life because you know the word so that you know, there's not that much going on in these small towns with the same

five families living a numb or whatever, and so whenever you do hear a cool story, you tell everybody, like if the word gets around, so even without newspapers and stuff, like, people were still, you know, pretty up nimbulation. It'd be like, you know, literally Captain Marvel shows up in your town and you're like, oh, I've heard all these stories about you. I used to read your comics. I wonder how the telephone game did get misconstrued if they were like, oh,

I heard you were punching snakes. I heard you like would swing on vines through the treetops. Hell, yeah, Kennedy's I heard you were friends with a bunch of singing gorillas. Oh my god, an in sync song. That's right. They would play all you're silve aware, right. I do not know if there are gorillas in the Amazon, and I didn't take the time to check before I made that joke, and I don't think so well anyway, So that's kind

of nice. She had a really tough time getting to this ship, but then on her way up the river she was getting some nice petty foes and all these little ports. I banked you this cake for your troubles, lady. Not too bad. So finally, finally, finally, on July twenty second, seventeen seventy, the Galliote docked in French Guiana, and Isabelle and Sean saw each other again for the first time in twenty one year. Oh my god, incredible. He's like, oh,

your hair turned gray. She's like, you're you know, you're fourteen years old. Your hair also, yeah, whatever hair you got left is gray now, sir, no wrinkles hair. Very happy, clearly to see each other in any state, Oh my god. It also took ten months for her to get there, by the way, ten months after she had left LaBamba, Labama, Guzman. I guess not real. Yeah, And you know, Jean had tears in his eyes when he saw her. He embraced her.

He called her, quote my cherished wife. UM rejected. Princesses dot com is a great website where I love it, and it's where I got a lot most of this story. They had the best sources, um. And they say that not much of Isabel's writing survives today, but quite a lot of Jean's does, probably because all them letters he was, and he apparently was always going on and on and on about how smart and beautiful and kind Isabel was and how much he admired her and loved her and stuff.

So he was just a real wife guy. And even though he had plenty of opportunities to give up on her, I mean, he even heard that she might already be dead, right, he never gave up. And so he clearly was pretty obsessed with her, and obviously she with him because she went she could have turned around anytime, and like, okay, forget that frenchman, hang out back at home where I'm safe. So these guys were like soulmates. Nothing not a jungle, not a butot fly, not the Portuguese government. Nobody was

going to keep them apart. Right now. One piece of Isabel's writing does still exist, and it was a strongly worded letter that she sent to the people who had arrested her faithful servant Joaquin oh good, yes, very faithful, because she said she would give her him this freedom right and also like he couldn't really not, but he

was still languishing in jail. And as soon as Isabel caught wind of this, she wrote to them demanding that they exonerate him and immediately free him not just from jail, but from slavery, as she had promised him so many months ago. Yeah right, She's like, do you know who I am. I will personally walk through the jungle over there, bring my new butt fly friends with me, and they're gonna lay some maggots in your belt. Okay, I survived butt flies, smallpox, snakes. I can survive you. I will

punch you in the face. Well it worked. They got that letter. They were shaken in their boots. They were like, we do not want this lady to show up, and Joachim was released to live his life as a freeman. Yea, I'm so glad to get a wrap up to his story. She cut him a check too. I know, I feel like he deserves. I mean, he went through it too, surely. Yeah, yeah's just the jail. He also to go through the jungle. I mean, for real, he probably had some butt flies himself,

and you know you don't. It's just like, okay, you're free now, Okay, there you go go ahead walk into the jungle like you know, I got nothing for you. I'm free in this town that arrested, right and things. I'm guilty of murder. So cool, hopefully, she said, A couple of gold necklaces and plot of land somewhere or well. Isabel and Jean lived in Cayenne in French Guiana for a few years, and then they finally moved back to France along with Isabel's father, Don Petro, and he died

in seventeen eighty. Jean was promoted in the science worlds because he had used his twenty years in French Guiana. Wisely, he wasn't just writing letters trying to start a war. He was also exploring the area and collected around seven thousand species of plants. So when they got to France, he gifted his collection to the Museum of Natural History, where they still are today. Oh cool, like pressed leaves and I guess some like drawings and like descriptions. I

guess that's cool. Maybe some like vials of like, you know, sap or something. I don't know, that's want plants. Well, anyway, his collection was really impressive, and of course he also had all of the plant life and wildlife and stuff that he had studied and cataloged in Riobamba as well. He had quite a lot of information and he was elected a member of the French Academy of Science in seventeen eighty four. He spent most of the rest of his life kind of getting his notes together from his

decades of exploring the Amazon. Geez, it's like something you could actually like read and learn from us. This is why, you know, just stay organized throughout, because otherwise you're going to spend the last third of your life. What do I mean when I said this? Oh? My god? Was this before, honey? Was this before or after I found you on the river? Oh? Here's that letter where I called the Portuguese king a fat bitch. I'm glad I never sent that turned out differently. I guess that's why

we didn't get into a war. Well. Isabel lived quietly among Jean's relatives. They said that she never spoke of her harrowing journey, but sometimes she would take a pair of sandals and a cotton dress out of an ebony box and just sit looking at them in silence. Oh wow, remembering. Wow. She buy had some pretty intense pps. She's like, I'm not living through this to tell you, but it does make me wonder, like, who recorded this trip so that

we have these details? So somebody must have. She must have told someone, or the doctor did, or somebody to record all these details. Cut to Joachim in Steven Spielberg's office being like, and then I had to leave the sand bar this poor Isabel behind. I Actually, that would be amazing if if if Joachim was just like Isabel was just great. You know, she was a sweet lady. I'd like to work it for. She wasn't a piece of shit to be to be owned by um. And

she gave me my freedom as she promised. So pretty cool of her, just like a lad, you know exactly. The Laddin came through in the end, and so he's like, I'm going to tell this story and she's going to be punching snakes. She would be freaking scaling mountains all by herself. A shirt turns her into this amazing here. No, she really I think she really did do all this stuff. But I don't think it was a fake story anything, But that would be kind of cool, a joaking well.

Jean Goden diz Adonnay died in March of seventeen ninety two at seventy eight years old, and only six months later in September Isabelle passed away. She was sixty four. Oh wow. I mean, you know, surely kind of a ripe old age in the late seventeen hundreds. Probably that's true. But also, yeah, I gotta imagine that these two were so devoted to each other. It was like our whole a third of our lives were spent getting back to each other. Right, I do wonder because she was definitely

not well. You know, she wasn't. She never was back to full health and wellness or anything after this insane sure chrip, Sure, but I think I kind of agree with you. I feel like she was just like, well, I already decided life was not worth living without you, you know what I mean. I would go through anything to be with you, And now you're not here. So the next adventure for us to go on together is death. Maybe.

I also really like there's some some math in here that they spent twenty one years apart and then they lived twenty two years together, and they were like, we got one more year together than we did apart. That's that's good. Does that include the six years before he left? No, No, I'm just saying once they got back, they met up in seventeen seventy and then died in seventeen ninety two. That's nice. Yeah, I'm glad they got more time together

than apart. Yeah, because that was definitely I was sitting there typing this out, like, hmm, I spent twenty one years to get ten years or whatever. But no, that's good. I'm glad they got a little more time, better years too, because you know your thirties, Yeah, your forties through sixties, those are the those are the golden years with your spouse, right, I hope. So it's coming. It's coming. These past few years have not been golden. Guess what I'm supposed to

take from that? Geez whatever, traveling around the world make an art together? I don't. Would you travel through the junk the Amazon rainforest to find Oh I was going to ask that about you. Um, I'll start okay, honestly, okay, I would do everything in my power to try and get a helicopter or a hot air balloon or any number of options. I would even take a boat down the river, um, a canoe, um, look walking walking on foot.

I okay, here's the thing I established early in our getting to know each other that there's a couple of biomes that I don't particularly care to experiences, and I'm a I'm a traveler. I love new experiences, but there's so much in the world, I'm never going to see all of it, right, So I put Deep in the Rainforest low on my list of goals. Um, okay, because and here's the thing. My two least favorite things, and I say this as someone who lives in Georgia, are

humidity and bugs. I don't like it. I don't like the way I feel right, Um, but of course I would. Yes, I would do it. I would to the rainforest for you. I know I would. I would never you would never hear the end of it? Oh No, I definitely do it never. I would never stop. John would never hear the end. Every time, so argument sprang up between them. She'd be like, do you know what I have been thr Yeah? You ever had a fly maggots in your stomach? Hu?

I didn't think so you know why? Because you didn't walk through the damn joun goles to get to me. I walked through. Yeah. I don't know. She's I feel like she was better than me for never speeding. She is better than me, Like I'm writing six books I'm getting on sixty minutes. I want to talk to huh Drew Barrymore. I want a movie made about me, an

HBO series, Broadway playing. I want to be a mass singer. Right, they'd probably actually know what they would do is have Isabelle hosts some kind of dating show, so she'd be like, what would you do for love? You know what I mean? Like, you know what, we all know what I've done for love? Will you eat a scorpion or whatever? It's like a fear factor meets uh, you know, the Bachelor, and then later she's like, I thought that I had experienced the worst hell a person could go through, and then I

worked in reality television. Take me back to the ra take me back to the bot fly. I wish I was in that sand bargain. Amazing. Well, I love this story. I mean, this is devotion. No, for real, We've we've been building like a catalog. I think of stories. There's a category in our show somewhere of people who've like really dealt with the wilderness to get to someone they love. I'm thinking about the guy who carved the staircase in the mountain I know, right, or we also had those

Arctic explorers inuits. They are actually together, right, They weren't trying to get to one another, right, But they did have to deal with some really crazy wilderness, that's for sure. It really makes you think about love and devotion in a whole new way, you know. I think also because you mentioned to Klitu and a pure Vic, and they were total badasses. Of course they grew up in that environments.

They had no trouble with it. But even people like Bell who showed me that we're so resilient and and tough even when we think we're not so. Actually, maybe I would do better checking through the rainforest than I think I would because it's a Bell. I mean, she was a rich lady in the seventeen hundreds. I gotta imagine. I hope I'm not softer than her that I could. I could, I could handle it if I had to. Well.

In Gene Wilson Murray's essay, she's kind of asking the question like, how is Isabel able to survive over everybody else? True party? And one of the reasons was she was a little plump, so she had some fat to lose. I guess she had, you know, some stores of fat to keep her alive. I don't know how accurate that is, but she was very faithful. She prayed a lot through her trips, so at least for Jean that that seemed

to be a reason. But I think mainly it's because she had a goal, Like she had a very clear reason for being there. So even if, like maybe her brothers had not died, they might have given up on the journey eventually, you know what I mean, because they you know, they had very more I guess, more vague reasons for going. You know what I mean this to the Southern coast, where she's like, that's I have to get to him. I love him. He's a thread that

is pulling me inexorably in this direction. And there's something to be said, like the human spirit with a goal like that, you know, you do you do end up adapting to some really crazy situations and and and living through and dealing with insane stuff when there's something like that at the end of the you know, rainbow for you. I think we've seen on this show several times how that there's there's something to that that that dedication and that motivation, like it can get you through a lot.

I mean, it might be all there is, right, So if you're so, if you're at the end of the jungle, I've got the motivation. You know, we'll say I've got my own version of that faith that she kept. And um, you know, I've been preparing for the for the fat stores for the last couple of years, so maybe maybe it'll be all right. Maybe all right, maybe that's this whole Since twenty twenty, I've just been getting ready for my hike through the rainforest. Maybe I still like to

avoid it. You should say that, you should be like, I've actually just been Actually, yeah, I got my high school reunion coming up. I'll just tell everybody, like, actually, I'm preparing for a trek through the rainforest. That's why I'm in such bad shape. Help out. I heard about this, lady. This is the way to go. Eli. You having a hard time with the stairs there, Yeah, I don't worry. I'm just getting ready for a hike through the Amazon rainforest. This is this is the what's going to make the

difference between victory and defeat. Ten months. Give me a second, say I'll be up in a minute. It gonna take me ten months to get up these stairs. It's like three steps. Ah nah, you haven't hit the gym in a while. Well what a what an awesome story about some beautiful people, right, I'm happy for them, glad they got to be back together. Yeah. Well, thanks again to

Simon at shingweti one on Twitter for this suggestion. Awesome story to go through and learn about, and again just makes me think about love and devotion in a whole new way for real. But you know we love and are devoted to you listener, and we'd love to hear from you, So please reach out. Let us know what you thought about this episode, give us other suggestions. Tell us how far you'd walk for your loved ones with us one foot or three thousand miles. Our email address

is Ridic Romance at gmail dot com. That's right, or you can find us on Instagram. I'm at Oh great, it's Eli. I'm at sianamite phone and the show is at Riddic Romance. That's right. And we really appreciate you for spending your time with us and we can't wait to bring another story to you. Yeah, we'll catch you the next one. You so long, friends, it's time to go. Thanks for listening to our show. Tell your friends, neighbor's uncle's in dance to listen to a show ridiculous from dance