I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for Hiram Bingham when he came upon the forgotten Inca site of Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes in 1911 and presented it to the world. There must be better words to describe feelings like excitement and glee, but tenfold!

Legend has it that there is another lost city in Peru where the Incan hero Inkarri (or Inkarí) took refuge from the Spaniards: Paititi. It was apparently Inkarri’s oasis after he founded the city of Cuzco, the site of Machu Picchu, and it could be the very El Dorado, the “Lost City of Gold,” that the Spanish conquistadors Francisco Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro searched for in their conquest of the Incan empire during the mid-1500s. It should have all the gold and treasure that was lacking when Machu Picchu was discovered.

There have been various attempts to locate Paititi over the last century with one of the most recent ventures in 2008 led by the American explorer Gregory Deyermenjian who has conducted more than 10 past expeditions in search of the lost city. That same year, Peruvians discovered what they thought to be a stone fortress that could be Paititi near Cuzco, which they later dubbed Manco Pata. Unfortunately, upon closer examination, they found the ruins to be naturally formed rather than human made.

The first time I truly felt and listened to the explorer in me was during my early years in university. I had a particularly adventure-minded friend and together we raced through the forest of the local golf course in the middle of the night, getting pricked by pine needles and soaked in swamps, and inspected parts of the university beach that seemed abandoned. I left that side of me behind as I began to focus on my studies and didn’t rediscover it again until I arrived here in the Andes and trekked through its mountains.

How has the explorer in you shined through in the past or how does it currently shine through?