Curi Yacu

Juan Antonio Pinedo Panduro was an honest farmer who, in his youth, devoted much of his time to hunting. One morning, he asked his mother for permission to go in search of deer. After she packed half a dozen boiled eggs and a couple of ripe bananas in his bag, he headed towards the Cumbaza stream and followed it upstream until reaching its headwaters, where several other streams converge.

Suddenly, he saw some golden “shitaritos” fish in the waters of one of them. Eager to catch them, he followed the little fish, but they eluded him, as if sensing his intention, heading to a pool of dark water. Pinedo discovered with surprise, lying on the edge of this pool, a huge black and shiny bull, drooling something yellow.

Overcoming the strong impression he had, he decided to investigate up close. The bull remained in the same state and the same place; he realized that where the animal’s drool fell, there were pure gold nuggets. Happy with this discovery, he decided to return home. Facing a sudden storm while walking, Pinedo, determined to reach his village, tossed gold nuggets into a stream.

Pinedo recounted what happened to an old man; he said, “As soon as you collected the gold nuggets, you should have cut yourself anywhere on your body; you would have made a cross with your blood over the nuggets to break the enchantment.”

The old man and Pinedo reached the stream, but the golden fish and bull had vanished. The Curi-Yacu river remained, named “river of gold.”