A 25-year-old local fisherman Yolman Lares was the first to reveal the precious “gifts”.
“I began to shake, I cried from joy. It was the first time something special has happened to me,” he told The New York Times, describing the moment he found a gold medallion with an image of the Virgin Mary.
Rumours had spread rapidly, and soon people started to retrieve jewelry, mostly gold rings. Villagers have been selling the treasures to buy food.
“This is God, setting his agenda,” believes Ciro Quijada, a local fish plant worker.
Mysterious jewelry from the sea started to appear in the sands of a small Venezuelan fishing village months ago.
The discoveries, including hundreds of gold and silver rings, medallions, ornaments and even nuggets, brought a lot of joy to the small village of Guaca, where local people have been struggling through the economic crisis and COVID-19 pandemic.
A laboratory examination claims that this jewelry can’t be more than seven decades old. There is no explanation yet as to where the jewelry could have come from, but locals enjoy imagining long-gone sailors and pirates. Some of them even claim that the rings are cursed and shouldn’t be touched.