About six hours into a hike in the high Andes. About 3,000 meters here. So air is getting a little bit thinner, a bit of a shortage of breath as you can hear.

I'm looking out on an astonishing view, towering mountains on other side of me, down below me a valley and in the bottom of that

valley a river, white water raging along and I can just hear the sound of that water

crashing along the rocks from all the way up here.

It's hot when that sun comes out, but there's very heavy vegetation,

so you're often in the shade and the temperature can really plunge.

The guide has told us to be very careful of snakes.

Apparently there's a brown snake, a black snake and a red snake and the guide

said one of them is exceptionally poisonous. I've forgotten which one so my policy has been so far to

avoid all of them. I've spent my career visiting extraordinary historic sites, some of the most famous and impressive on the

planet. I've staggered in extreme heat through the Egyptian desert. I've

wandered about on the ice and Antarctica.

Put my crampons on and walked across glaciers and the Alps and Alaska,

but this is somewhere completely new to me.

The Peruvian Andes. I'm following a trail taken by a remarkable man, Hiram Bingham, in

1911, the American Explorer who it said inspired the whip totting adventurer

Indiana Jones who I'm sure ignited my passion for history and archaeology as he

did from many other listeners of this podcast.

In fact, very embarrassing I'm wearing a Indiana Jones hat on this journey, my homage

to him. But more importantly, in the real world, Bingham, heard a rumor of a fabled lost city in the clouds

that would reveal the power the skill the brilliance of the Inca who once ruled over a vast empire that spanned

this continent from the Amazon basin the Pacific coast. He made his way through

...