Finding Manchester, lost in Bolivia
4 September 2010 – 30 January 2011
Chris Smith and Liz Peel came across the village of Manchester on a 1950s Russian air map of Bolivia. Intrigued by this, they set out on a canoe along the Rio Manuripi River in the Bolivian Amazon in South America to find it. Liz and Chris spent four months on the river, negotiating tropical storms, eating piranha fish and aided only by basic equipment, before reaching the small village. Home to less than thirty families living in huts around a football pitch, the village was founded in the late 1800s when Anthony Webster-James, a young Mancunian engineer, moved there to set up a rubber smelting plant in the height of South America's rubber boom.
Finding Manchester, lost in Bolivia, followed Chris Smith and Liz Peel on their amazing four month journey through the Amazon in search of the small South American village of Manchester. There amazing journey was brought to life through photos, journal extracts, expedition equipment and Museum objects.