Original subtitles

Gold mining prodigy...

And that's $3 million right there on the table.

Parker schnabel

is searching for his next big score...

This is wild.

Yeah.

Deep in the jungles of Brazil.

There's a huge amount of conflict over mining.

The only way to understand is to come here and see it.

That is cool.

And if there is a opportunity for us to invest,

then I wanna look at those opportunities.

Look, look. That's gold.

Look at these bad boys.

I did get fitted for a bulletproof vest, though.

That's a first.

Previously on Parker's trail...

The revenue that would come out

of serra pelada would probably be $1.5 billion.

There is a lot of still legal issues

surrounding the cooperative.

I don't really feel like hanging around here

while the two factions of the co-op do battle.

It'd be cool to see a big hard rock mine.

Holy.

I would hate to guess what this place is worth.

It's too much of an investment.

I know that there's a ton of placer mining

in this country that we haven't seen,

and I think it would be good to see some of that.

Peixoto is kind of a tradition area

- for the mining. - Right.

And it was founded around mining activities.

To get there, we are gonna cross,

it's like a very big and famous indigenous land,

which the name is parque do xingu.

Yeah, it'd be cool to meet indigenous people.

After three weeks exploring Brazil's

hard rock mining industry in serra pelada and pocone,

Parker has just one week left in the country,

and he's decided on a final roll of the dice

in the placer mining hub of peixoto de azevedo.

In the north of mato grosso, the city is surrounded

by seven million acres of indigenous land.

I do feel like this trip got quite a wide range

of different mining operations in Brazil.

But this next part of the trip,

I really want to go

into the more regulated placer mines

that we're gonna recognize a lot better

in terms of relatability to our operation.

Hopefully, we can find interesting places,

and people, and opportunities.

That's the peixoto just by the river.

It looks dirty.

Billions of years ago,

peixoto was a volcanic landscape.

Liquid magma erupted onto the surface

and crystalized into bands of gold-rich quartz.

Waterways then carried tiny fragments of gold

across the landscape,

forming a rich placer deposit.

Since 1978, miners have produced

over 250 tons of gold worth $14 billion,

earning the town the reputation

of a placer mining paradise.

Well, here we are.

- It's a neat little town? - Yeah.

- Yeah, very... - new town, new place,

new part of Brazil.

- Everyone excited? - Yup.

Yeah, I'm excited for it.

I think we should go first with the co-op.

If I'm not wrong, the biggest of Brazil.

- Yes, another co-op. - Yes.

I think this... the co-op here in peixoto de azevedo

is very different from the co-op in serra pelada.

They can give us, like, a good context and also, like,

indicate places for us to go and visit, you know?

Yeah.

Like most gold regions in Brazil,

the local cooperative controls the rights

to mine land in peixoto.

I have no idea what you just said, but okay.

A crucial first stop for anyone

interested in investment.

Well, they've got a nicer building.

It's different from serra pelada, isn't it?

Hey, how you doin'?

Gilson camboim is the director.

He's showing us around.

That's what we're looking for.

Copper... This is copper ore.

Wow.

Yeah, look at that.

As part of, like, the cooperative,

are they running the mine sites

or do they just do all of the, like, admin

for people that are doing the mining?

The ground in peixoto belongs to landowners,

but the mining rights sit with the co-op,

which supports over 200 individual operations

as well as funding projects

that help prevent illegal mining on indigenous land.

And I'm sure that they have the same problem

that I do, the people that mine illegally

reflects badly on the whole industry.

Exactly.

And they must take a royalty?

All the members, they pay an annual fee...

- Right. - Of 0.3%.

- That seems really low. - Yeah, it's low but actually,

they do have a lot of members

and they do produce a lot of gold,

so they have an income

to keep their office running and all that,

and since they produce more or less

four tons of gold per year.

And they do four tons?

They produce more placer gold than the entire Yukon.

Almost double. All the placer miners

in the Yukon are normally around 70,000 ounces a year

and four tons is like 130,000.

Four tons of gold is worth $200 million.

They have some ground for me?

Let's go in that conference room

and hack this out.

Did you see Parker's face

when they said four tons?

Now he knows what it's like to feel small.

Four tons, double the amount that comes out

of the entire Yukon.

This little litmus.

Four... four... Four tons.

Four. Four?

Double. Wow.

And this is a stark contrast to serra pelada.

They seem very well-organized and productive.

I mean, under the umbrella of this cooperative is,

you know, an industry bigger than the entire

placer mining industry in the Yukon, so.

I just need to look for some ground.

Do you know of any local landowners

that might have ground for sale?

Yes.

Saying that they have a contact.

So I think we should give him a call.

That sounds good.

And Daniel is inviting you

to go to visit the mine site with him.

- Perfect. - He's a geologist

so he'll know all your doubt... you can...

- Yeah. Good. - Answer...

- We can nerd out together. - Exactly.

Yeah. And we follow up on landowner leads.

- Perfect. - Awesome.

Should we get... Should we get on the road?

Should we do this?

Obrigado.

I feel like a miner with this hat on.

I feel like I'm one of the locals.

I reckon I'd blend in pretty well.

Yeah, you're well-blended, yeah.

- Yeah. - For sure.

While Danny and Larissa stay in town

to follow up with local landowners.

Parker and Diego follow the co-op geologist,

Daniel, to one of peixoto's top performing mine sites.

If cattle didn't stink so much,

I would definitely be down

to be involved in some ranching of some sort, yeah.

Really? I don't think it stinks.

I love the smell.

It's actually very nice.

It's easier as organized as they say.

Let's go.

Clever truilho is the son

of one of the co-op's founders,

and together with his father, owns the pepita mine,

named after the Portuguese word for nugget.

He's gonna explain to us the process they have here.

What would you like to know?

What you want to ask to them?

Everything.

How many employees?

On each dredge, they have five workers,

three assistants.

We have to open up way bigger areas.

Everything's frozen in the Yukon.

And so we can't sit in small areas like this.

Unlike Parker's mine in the Yukon

where he must strip tons of frozen soil

to get down to gold rich pay dirt,

here, workers use water jets to blast strip pay dirt

containing gold directly to the bottom of each pit.

The slurry is then sucked up by dredges, or floating pumps,

and sent directly to one of six movable sluice runs

where the gold falls into the box.

It's a system that can be derigged

and rebuilt quickly to chase the gold.

They have ripple.

, it's so fine.

That's really hard gold to catch.

Why does the gold float?

Because of the water is too muddy?

No, fine gold floats.

It's surface tension.

Fine gold like this can be so light

that it floats on water, making it hard to catch.

- And the gold just go... - Yeah.

There, yeah.

To make sure he is getting the maximum gold,

clever often runs his waste tailings again.

Do they clean up every day?

Got you. We do it every 70 hours.

This is my least favorite part of the whole mining process.

Half a gram per squared meter.

In eight hours?

In eight hours, yeah.

Wow.

I was pretty impressed with that pit.

In his current pit,

clever is mining $12,500 of gold

every eight hours,

the equivalent of $3 million a year.

The gold, it's impressive.

Peixoto has a ton of positives.

It's pretty well-developed, landownership rights,

and laws seem to be fairly well-established.

It fits the bill quite well in a way that no area

we've ever been to before has.

Yeah, I could see us getting involved in here.

, this is nice.

In a placer mining utopia

of peixoto, where small-scale miners

produce double the gold of the entire Yukon.

I'm loving the heavy window tint.

I'm gonna have to do this on our mine site.

Parker has found some serious yellow iron...

A brand new d7, 260 horsepower dozer.

These dozers are very new,

so that's half a million apiece, so there's, you know,

$1.5 million worth of equipment

sitting here, doing reclamation.

So, you know, obviously,

there's some money in the ground.

These 30-ton machines

are a critical part of miner clever's operation.

First, for stripping ground to get to pay dirt,

then for reclamation by refilling the mined pit

before planting native vegetation.

In this... the area, the way it was before mining,

so for example, this area was cattle,

so it was only grass for feeding the cattle.

And they will leave it back again as cattle area.

Reclamation is a non-negotiable part

of running a mine in peixoto.

In all the mine sites we've been to

in South America, this is the first time

we've been to one, like, actively doing reclamation.

It's really nice to see.

So I'm definitely interested in planning something.

You just need a piece of really good ground.

Back in town.

Larissa's hot on the trail

of available land that Parker could buy.

It sounded positive.

Yes, it really did.

He's a landowner.

I asked if he could meet us later in the hotel.

Wicked. Perfect.

- Nice one, Larissa. - Yeah.

Yeah.

I could sit in there all day.

It's the one part of the mine site

I miss when I'm away.

That's a nice tractor, too.

Yeah.

Really nice.

One of the nicest dozers I've ever ran.

My first impression of peixoto

is that it's the right place to be.

Everybody's pretty chill. It actually kind of has

a pretty similar vibe to the Yukon.

And the big thing is, like, how much ground

is still left here, you know?

That's one of the big questions.

I really don't know what to expect.

Back at the crew hotel...

We just need him to turn up, don't we?

Danny and Larissa wait

for one of peixoto's biggest landowners.

Marcelo valbenocci

is a self-made local businessman

who owns over 2,500 acres

of prime ground in peixoto.

He's saying that he sees a lot of opportunities still...

For gold mining and all that.

Marcelo specializes in virgin ground,

land that has never been mined before

and could be rich in gold.

Yeah. Wow.

- All in right now. - Yeah.

My.

Wow.

These nuggets are worth over $40,000 combined.

I think it'd be really cool

if we could call him again to meet up with Parker.

Yeah.

He's saying that he's away for a couple of days,

but we can meet him after that.

When they come back, we'll have a chat with them

and see if we can organize it.

- Yeah. - Thanks so much for your time.

Obrigado.

So we've just met Marcelo.

He was explaining to us that he has land around,

and it seems he's been here for a long time,

so that's why I think it's important

for Parker to meet him.

- How's it going? - Hey.

How was your day?

That mining site was completely different

- from the other one we... - Was it?

Really?

Yeah. The first outfit that I've seen

in South America that actually made sense.

Awesome.

We've had a wicked day.

- Really? - Yeah.

Yeah, we did a lot of stuff.

You just missed landowner Marcelo.

My. I was just fondling Marcelo's nugs that...

Not even 15 minutes ago.

I think you should meet him.

That sounds good.

So today we went to this guy clever's mine.

That was interesting.

There was a bunch of pretty nice gear there.

And so, it felt like gold from the ground

was paying for all that stuff.

And that's a good sign. It means we're in a good area.

It sounds like the opportunity

to talk to Marcelo,

and hopefully look at some properties

and get some real leads.

So excited to check out more.

Cool.

Right. Get some sleep and then hit it tomorrow. Yeah?

- Yeah. - Awesome.

We had a very productive day

here in peixoto de azevedo.

Clearly the ground here is very good,

but we need to talk

and let's see what we come up to do tomorrow.

I really want to show a indigenous land

to Parker, Diego, and Danny.

So let's see what we find.

Wow. This is amazing. This is cool, isn't it?

I'm so excited.

It's good to be here.

I don't think you have a complete experience

of the Brazilian Amazon

if you don't get to meet an indigenous community

and learn something from them.

With landowner Marcelo out of town for two days,

Parker and his crew had 170 miles east

to the mighty xingu river in the heartland

of the indigenous kayapó people.

That's so cool.

There is a pretty big,

well-established indigenous community

here in mato grosso,

and for me, there's always a lot

of local impact concerns

both environmentally and socially.

So it's really important to just go and meet with them

and sit down and hear it

straight from the horse's mouth, if you will.

With ancestral lands across mato grosso and pará,

the kayapó people have only been in contact

with the outside world for 70 years.

Different world.

- Yeah. - Purest, whitest sand.

We are inside indigenous land now,

so we should be respectful.

This is a kayapó village.

- Kayapó village. - Yeah.

They kind of divide the activities in who does what.

You see like all the women, they work together,

while men, they have other activities that they do here.

Kayapó existence relies on river fishing,

hunting, and foraging the land around them

to source food and natural medicines.

This is manioc.

Wow.

And then they're drying it

like to make the far of a manioc powder.

Manioc, or cassava, is a root vegetable

commonly crushed into a powder

and used to make the flatbreads

served with most meals.

That is awesome.

We should try to find megaron.

Larissa has set up a meeting

with the well-known kayapó chief here named megaron.

He can take us to megaron,

but he say like, that's on the other side of the village.

We need to cross a little creek.

- Yup. Cool. - Yeah.

- Sounds good. - He can take us there.

Yeah, that'd be amazing.

He's saying that all the trees we see here,

he planted all of them when he was a kid.

Wow.

Must be pretty cool wandering through a forest

that you planted as a kid.

Megaron is super famous

indigenous leader in Brazil.

He's fighting against illegal loggers and illegal miners.

You should be careful here.

You should not step here.

- We need to go that way. - Okay.

They're invading the kayapó territory

and think it's important to show Parker.

Here we are.

The chief is here.

Wow.

- Parker. - Parker.

- Diego. - Diego.

How many indigenous people live like in this area

or in this particular park?

Well, quite a few.

- Yeah. - Yeah. It's a lot.

Well, he's saying like kayapó people,

they are really suffering

because of illegal miners in their territory.

They destroyed the land. They pollute the rivers.

It also affected the way they hunt

because they don't have as much animals to hunt anymore.

Since 2018,

illegal gold mining has spread like wildfire

in the indigenous lands of Brazil,

especially in the states of pará and roraima

further north with 50,000 acres destroyed

and polluted every year.

Because indigenous communities

rely on harvesting food

and hunting in the forest to survive,

these invasions of protected land

have devastating effects,

including malnutrition and illness.

A cause megaron seeks to bring to light

through his work.

There's a lot of people in the world

that, no matter what, it's never enough.

In pará, since he's very involved

in solving conflicts

between kayapó people and miners.

They wanna live in peace.

They have everything they need here.

They want to protect and preserve these lands.

Well, these guys were here first

and for a long time.

They don't face here, in this area,

problems with illegal miners

because they don't accept invaders in the territory.

That's good.

He says it's important that us

with the camera show the world

and spread the message that what they really want

is to be left alone.

They wanna live in peace.

Just thank him for his time and for the, warm welcome.

You know, I live in a community

that has pretty strong indigenous roots.

And visiting a place like that makes me feel a bit sad.

They have to try so hard to just get left alone.

He's saying that his wife over there,

she knows how to do the body painting.

If you wanna do some body paintings.

Yeah.

We should do that.

I do really like getting a very different take

on what life's all about.

Can you ask them what this means?

Some of them are represent animals.

It's a tortoise painting.

That's cool.

You know, the beginning in this trip,

we filmed with a bunch of illegal gold miners

and now we're with a village of indigenous people

who have been in this area

for, I'm assuming, thousands of years.

And that's definitely hard to reconcile

visiting illegal miners,

understanding their issues,

then coming here and visiting indigenous people,

understanding the potential impact

that mining has on them, right?

And I think that's why it's important

that laws are enforced.

I really do.

And it's good that in this area,

it sounds like they have a pretty hard line

that they draw of keeping industry out

so that they can live the way they wanna live.

The chief was explaining

that when a community is in peace,

they do the body paintings, and I'm like, yeah.

Yeah, much better than having to do it before going to war.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

- You like it? - Obrigado.

Okey-dokey. All right. Let's load her up.

Awesome.

- Okay. - Bye.

Ciao.

Back on the road.

It was my favorite part of the trip.

Yeah.

I love the idea of wandering through your own forest.

I'm gonna have my own forest.

- Yeah? - Yeah. My dad planted

- like 5,000 trees like 30 years ago. - Really?

- No. - Yeah.

That's cool.

- But it is in Alaska? - That's so cool.

- It's kind of nice? - Yeah.

Yeah, it is nice.

Should we go see Marcelo then?

Heading back to peixoto

after two days in indigenous territory,

Parker is on the hunt for his own slice

of this mining utopia.

It's probably one of the better areas we've ever been to

in all the years of doing these trips.

This year, volume of gold being mined,

the grade of the ground.

The next step is see if we can find

some perspective ground.

I'm very excited.

Larissa has managed to secure a meeting

for Parker with one of the biggest landowners in the area.

See? He's got a lot going on, Marcelo, isn't he?

He owns a lot of land around

and also he's involved in mining,

but that's pretty much what we know.

I think it's one of these places.

- I think it's here. - It's a nice house.

Well, it looks like he's done pretty well for himself.

Let's go.

Okay. Let's go and see what he has to say.

Mr. Parker.

Marcelo valbenocci has lived in peixoto

for 30 years,

slowly accumulating a large portfolio of land.

- Beautiful house. - It's gorgeous, isn't it?

He's inviting us to see his land.

Sweet. That'd be great.

Marcelo has a piece of ground

he thinks Parker may be interested in,

seven miles north of the town.

Okay. Let's go.

Vamoose?

Nice truck.

I always like to see people who have done really well

and they have a nice big, fancy house.

And give a good reference for the area

in terms of this being the real deal.

These cars always make me feel really small.

Yeah.

I wanna go where the most gold is.

Yeah.

He's saying that there's gold everywhere.

What's his involvement with mining?

Marcelo has developed a 2,500-acre empire

in the region, a mixture of mines and farmland.

He say that all we see here with the soy crops

there's also minerals in it.

So that's his property.

Marcelo's 50-hectare plot

currently planted with soy crop,

sits right next to a working mine site.

Well, this is nice.

He's saying that the real gold is here.

What was the grade like in this?

What kind of gold per square meter was this?

- Over five grams per... - Wow.

- Square meter. - That's really good.

Roughly five grams a yard

is nearly eight times the gold of Parker's claim in the Yukon.

This is not his operation...

So you'd have to start

a new one over there where he has the land.

This previously mined pit...

Struck gold-bearing gravels from an ancient river.

The plot Marcelo is offering Parker

is just across the road.

And may also sit on the ancient riverbed.

If the yields are the same,

Marcelo's plot could make Parker a potential

$160 million payday.

Now you see the crops,

but in the future, you see a mining pit.

This has not been like

drilled or explored for mining?

Okay. I really appreciate that.

All right. Should we, part ways?

Yeah.

I think Parker really liked what he saw,

especially he was very curious about the gold potential.

This is a very good area for Parker to invest.

This place is chocker full of gold, isn't it?

Yeah.

How many ounces of gold would you be taking

if you were running your plant here?

At the rate that we mine, it was like

15 ounce an hour... what are you running an hour?

- Two. - Two? Like, mental, seven times.

It's a very productive mining area.

I've always said, if you could find gold

that has like somewhat close grades

to what we're mining in the Yukon

without the problems of seasonality

and permafrost that we have,

you could do really well.

. What is that? Hey, everybody,

everybody stop... Everybody stop, please.

There's an accident on the road.

Please everybody stop.

Going to check.

What do you think of this guy?

What's your hunch?

I think he is great.

- You like him? - Yeah.

Morning in peixoto, Parker and landowner Marcelo

get together to talk business.

First of all, like, thank you

for talking to us about mining around here.

He says he's honored, receiving us here

and also everyone in the region likes you

and loves the show.

We're always looking for ground

and this area is really intriguing to me.

You know, I like the people here.

I like the

- I mostly like the climate. - It's a little hot.

But it's just a matter of how much money.

Can I ask how big the whole price

of the 50-hectare area?

For the 50 hectares,

he would negotiate that for six million reais.

All right.

At $1 million for roughly 100 acres,

it's over five times

what Parker paid for his land in the Yukon.

And he's saying now that the, price of land

in the... in the region, not only here, but in mato grosso

as a whole increased a lot in the past years.

Got you.

I would love to be able to go test the ground.

There's still need to be a lot of drilling research.

Like if somebody has a soy field,

- you can't just go mine... - No, you can't.

- Through the whole thing, can you? - No, you can't. No.

Parker cannot test the claim

until after the spring harvest is taken

in five months' time.

It's not cheap here.

You wanna buy 100 acres of land,

it's like a million bucks.

And we mine 100 acres a year, so...

That math adds up but the odds of being able to buy

100-acre block that is minable is like probably very slim.

The amount of risk that you take on is insane.

For a deal to go through now,

Parker would need to buy the land

without testing for gold.

I think that there's a lot of potential,

but there's definitely a lot to think about for me.

The opportunity Marcelo has here

in terms of my timelines and risk profile,

it's... not the right thing to do.

How did everyone sleep?

I slept really well.

That felt a little bit deflating yesterday in some ways, didn't it?

Parker's ruled out a land deal with Marcelo.

Now, the crew must decide

whether to stay on in peixoto.

It feels like back to square one, but...

At the end of our trip,

but we still have some time.

- Not much. - Not much.

What are the options?

Continue exploring this area.

Especially after yesterday,

I feel like the ground does look

really interesting, right?

I think that's also a reason,

like, people here are doing so well.

The cooperative and also the miners

because here the gold is easier to get.

Yeah, I think we should just take a stab

at meeting a few people around here.

I mean, just about every trip we've been on,

this area is the most intriguing and interesting.

There's a huge amount of gold coming out of the ground here.

Sounds good. Cool.

And to make our business work in the Yukon,

it took us having boots on the ground

and meeting owner after owner.

Cool.

If we wanna get serious about finding ground down here,

that's what we're gonna have to do. Going all in on this

for the last week. There is lot of opportunity.

But, you have to be here and you have to live it.

- Let's get on it. - Let's go.

My. That's massive.

On the season finale of Parker's trail.

I'm really impressed.

My. Look at that!

Wow.

There's a huge amount of opportunity

in gold mining here.

I really would love to put some money

into something here.

Well, let's take some microphones off.