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remaining sailors confessed the treasure had been hidden in Cocos Island, but although the Captain of the Peruvian wanted to sail there right away, he had to sail to Panama because some of his sailors were fever stricken due to contaminated water. The ship was anchored for 3 weeks during which time one of the three sailors died. The other two managed to escape at night by jumping into the sea through an open hatch and swimming about 1 kilometer to another ship. Captain James Morris, rescued them. He was an American whaler from New Bedford, leaving at dawn, headed for Kona, Sandwich Islands, later named Hawaii. In Kona, where they arrived at the end of November, 1820, one of them decided to get off, while his friend continued with James Morris to their home base in Massachussets. They would never cross paths again. For the next 20 years, Thompson, the second survivor, worked on merchant ships between the US and the Caribbean. In 1846, John Keating, who had met one of the original survivors and heard all the treasure details, took advantage of a long stop by his ship in Panama and rented a small boat to take him to Cocos Island under the pretext of visiting a family member buried there. Upon arriving at Chatam Bay, Keating goes alone in a row boat toward the other Bay called Wafer, in honor of a 17th century pirate surgeon. The legend of the hidden treasure 26 years earlier is not yet known. Keating reaches the treasure cave after 1 hour of walking, moving the rock covering the entrance with great difficulty and fills a bag with coins and puts it inside his coat, quietly returning to the ship and later to his home in Saint John’s where he uses the coins to live a wealthy life but never returns to the island. Isla del Coco is claimed in September, 1869 as Costa Rican territory, thanks to the then President Jesús Jiménez and the search for the treasure by a young Englishman named Wlliam Tucker who was living in San Jose, Costa Rica. Then in 1888 a young German mariner named August Gissler meets in Kona, Hawaii, an old alcoholic Scotsman named Mackcomber, known as “Old Mack”, famous for telling fantastic stories of treasure and pirates. Gissler becomes the boyfriend of a beautiful native girl who is Mack´s daughter. Becoming gravelly ill, the old man tells Gissler how the Treasure of Lima was stolen and hidden in 1820 and how he was one of the only 2 survivors. Gissler decides upon Mack´s death to travel to Costa Rica and to Cocos Island, spending the rest of his life as the most conspicuous treasure hunter of all, even acting as Governor of Cocos Island from 1897 until 1906. After that many more treasure hunters tried to find the hidden gold. en 1931, 3 castaways from San Diego, California, who lived on the island for 6 months, discover the treasure cave, and insinuate the finding in an article published in 1932 in the American Magazine, titled “Six months on a desert island”. In November 1949, one of the castaways sent a letter to the

The treasure is the island!