Explorer Blog - Ancient Ruins

el Dorado

The lost city of gold has tantalized explorers since the discovery of the new world. Does it exist? Dozens of expeditions searched and none returned with a satisfactory answers, a few never returned.

Sometimes I hear that the world's been explored, mapped, photographed. Nothing left to find out there. I don't argue. As society's hubris grows, the fog will close again on these forgotten places, returning them to obscurity and ushering in a new age of exploration for some.

Think, what really have you learned of the world from an online map? The varying shades and swirls of green and brown only mask the vast blind spots that remain.

It's comfortable to imagine satellites, hundreds of miles overhead, scrying like a fortune-teller who gazes into a clouded ball far below. To become aware of the gaps in our collective experience, to recall the places no human has yet laid eyes on, only spied at through distant machines can lend a certain sense of foreboding. Suddenly the world may seem bigger, a little more dangerous.

And maybe a little more exciting. Any explorer can tell you though, an image from a satellite is as good as an admission of ignorance; a modern version of "Here there be dragons". Nothing is certain until humankind has left its footprint, brought light into the darkness, and returned to tell the tale.

Somewhere a lost city of gold is still waiting. . .