A City Above The Clouds

The mist enveloped the jungle in an ethereal haze, shrouding everything in a thick blanket of swirling, almost psychedelic, patterns.

I floundered forwards. Oozing, liquid clay, the colour of gore, sucked at my ankles. I leant heavily on my staff, cut earlier with a razor sharp machete, my breath came to me, raggedly.

A loyal band of mosquitos followed my every move, feasting upon my blood. Up ahead, I could hear a faint gurgling, the kind of sound an older gentleman may make as he brushes his teeth before bed.

Insects, frogs and larger creatures announced my approach, the jungle was alive with sound, it buzzed, clicked and whined. Thin tendrils of light, cut in twain by vines hanging from the canopy, made their way slowly, almost lazily, to the forest floor. It was still early but time was running out.

The gurgling grew in volume as I slipped down a muddy bank and pushed my way out of the jungle, a child being born. The river raged in front of me. It was perhaps thirty meters across and deep, deep enough to make me pause.

Angry white horses stared me down as they churned through the eddies. My quarry was almost within sight, this river needed to be crossed.

I plunged into the frigid waters, battling the current and inched forwards, my staff probing the way. I crawled on to a large boulder, the size of a van, ditched here by some unknown power, to catch my breath.

Leading away from me, deeper into the jungle and up, up, up. Stone steps, carved into the very heart of the forest. 1200 steps in all. Steps which, I knew, lead to a lost city. A city high in the mountains, almost constantly enveloped in clouds. A city which had faded into local mythology.

This was a city which had remained hidden, even from the marauding Spanish hordes, for over five hundred years. The last bastion of a once magnificent civilisation.

I began to climb. Forty minutes of hard hiking followed. I slipped often, flailing at tangled vines and spiky undergrowth to break my falls.

Drenched with sweat, utterly alone except for my mosquitos, I burst out of the jungle with no warning, the claustrophobic, enveloping canopy simply ending.

Huge stone plazas beckoned me forwards.

There was something primal about this place, I half expected King Kong to burst from the undergrowth at any moment, perhaps ridden by a tribe of stone-age warriors.

The sun was coming up making the plazas came alive with a golden hue, the jungle sighed, the day had begun.