María Guadalupe Ponce, from Corrientes, and Esteban Campostrini, from Gualeguaychu, met in Entre Ríos, at the beginning of this year. Since then they have been traveling across Europe in search of forgotten treasures, lost objects and relics of the past hidden beneath the earth of the ancient continent.
Campostrini, a 31-year-old metal detectorist, was born in Entre Ríos when he was a boy. On Sundays, his parents would load his companion into the car and go together to explore the fields. “When we would see an abandoned house, we would stop and go for a tour. We would find old coins and things. I was eight or nine years old and we were already doing these rituals as a family. It sparked my curiosity to think: ‘We’re going to these beautiful places… what would be underground?’
Over time, he realized that this curiosity was a legacy of his parents, who passed on to him the adventure of discovering what secrets might be buried: “We always said: ‘Oh, maybe they left some treasure behind.’”
Two decades later, when he was 24, he bought his first detector. At first he didn’t pay much attention to it: the equipment was simple, and most of it was garbage, which frustrated him. But the epidemic arrived. “I had to go through the pandemic, and like everyone, we started consuming more and more social media. YouTube was a key part.”
New metal detectors started coming out, they were more innovative, and I bought one. I am from Gualeguaycho, and I was honored that my family decided to spend the pandemic in the countryside, in the middle of nowhere, for fear of what might happen. Since the university was closed and everything was virtual, I went with them. I had a metal detector with me. “This is where my passion started,” Esteban said.
In that rural environment he discovered that objects of all kinds were hidden underground: antiques, forks, spoons, and items he had never imagined before. He started broadcasting live from the countryside and uploaded videos to YouTube so his grandmother, who resided in the city, could watch. “He would always call me on the phone and say, ‘What a beautiful thing you got!’”
As the pandemic ended, he noticed that more and more people were starting to work as metal detectors. He formed a group with his comrades and colleagues from Gualeguaychú and started going out to hunt as a team. “It was a lot of fun,” he recalls. He still gets excited when mentioning his first discovery: “It was an iron horseshoe. How wonderful! And I think I still have it in my grandmother’s fireplace. It was the first important thing I took out, or considered important at the time, because it was so symbolic to me.”
A year ago, Guadalupe arrived in Portugal in search of new adventures. Born and raised in Corrientes, she graduated as a public accountant in Resistencia, and after working in her province and then in Ushuaia, she felt it was time to start over somewhere else. Thus he reached the Lusitanian lands.
She met Esteban in southern Portugal, earlier this year, when she moved permanently. He actually lived there. She has always been passionate about hiking, and when she discovered Esteban’s metal detecting hobby, she was fascinated. He explained: “He told me that he also had a hobby. For me it was like something incredible, completely new, because I knew about dowsing, but it was not part of my world. I didn’t know anyone who did this kind of dowsing.”
Little by little, Guadalupe, 33, joined Esteban’s passion until it became hers too. During a trip through Galicia he found his first thing. “It was a Galician coin from 1800,” he recalls.
However, full metal detecting only began last September. The couple participated in the laboratory, the largest meeting of people dedicated to detection in the world. It was held on September 13 and 14 in England and was attended by more than 2,000 participants. Over two days, fans from around the world explore more than 500 hectares of historic terrain in search of coins, relics and treasure.
When asked how the detector works, Esteban summed it up naturally: “Detectors are managed by frequencies. They send a signal towards the Earth, and when it reaches the object, it bounces back. According to this bounce, the frequency returns to the detector panel and, through technology, gives you a signal.” The pair operates with two simultaneous signals: auditory and visual signals. “The detectors are programmed so that each metal, depending on its conductivity, gives you a different sound. You have not only the sound – which is difficult to explain, because the detectors we use with Guada are very complex – but also the screen,” he explained.
In the Guadalupe detector, the screen assigns a number from 0 to 30. “For example: from 0 to 5 it could be aluminum, from 5 to 10, coins of another material, from 10 to 15 we have more possibilities for gold, and from 15 to 30, we have more possibilities for silver. Depending on the material, it will give you a number on the screen and a different sound in your ear,” Esteban explained. The difficulty, he warned, is that many metals have similar compositions: “The conductivity of different materials is similar. So, very often you hear a sound and a number and you say, ‘This is a gold yes or yes ring,’ and out comes a piece of aluminum.”
They agree that research does not always lead to valuable results. “It’s not 100% accurate,” Esteban said. “No detector reaches more than one meter. The stuff we extract is superficial, about 30 or 40 centimetres.”
Most of what they find is trash. “Absolute rubbish. In eight hours of scouting, we’ve drilled about a hundred wells, and out of those hundred, ninety-five pieces of tin and tin sheets… We find bottle openers with glass in them, which is very dangerous sometimes because we make the well and have to use gloves. And there, among all that rubbish that people throw away, we get some coins.”
Now, the Argentine couple dreams of a new project: traveling an ancient route that begins in England and ends in the Vatican. They added: “It is an ancient route that even the kings of Austria took. It passes from a city in England, very close to London, along an ancient Roman road that takes you to the Vatican. It is 2,500 kilometers long, and we are thinking and seeing the possibilities for next year, at the beginning of the year, before we settle permanently in Portugal, and we can travel it by bike, and of course bring metal detectors.”
For Esteban, metal detecting has become more than just a recreational activity. He explained, “It is a hobby that connected me very much with nature, with adventure, with walking along the river, going for a walk, and purifying the air. I consider metal detecting not just a hobby, but rather a connection to the earth and a break from everything we do daily.”
For both of them, it is an activity that allows them to disconnect from reality and connect with the environment. “Like all pirates, we would like to find the gold coin,” they closed.