The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland - Softcover

The book that has become a classic since its first publication ten years ago.

The lost cities of South America have always exercised a powerful hold on the popular imagination. The ruins of the Incas and other pre-Columbian civilisations are scattered over thousands of miles of still largely uncharted territory, particularly in the Eastern Andes where the mountains fall away towards the Amazon.

Aged just twenty-one, Hugh Thomson first set off into the cloud-forest on foot to find a ruin that had been carelessly lost again after its initial discovery. This was his introduction to the curious and confusing world of Inca archaeology. He has since travelled to many remote lost cities via the countless interconnecting paths the Incas laid across the Andes, and explored what they left behind - the remnants of a remarkable civilisation that is still only partially understood.

Thomson weaves into the narrative accounts of some of the explorers who have gone before him: Hiram Bingham, who discovered Machu Picchu; brave Robert Nichols, killed looking for the mythical Paititi (a temple-site in the Madre de Dios which has acquired the same lure for explorers as the original El Dorado had for the conquistadors); and the remarkable modern explorer, Gene Savoy, who has discovered many impressive sites in just the last few years, including Espíritu Pampa, the last refuge of the Inca court after the Spanish conquest.

The book explores the Inca people as well as their heartland, resurrecting vividly their extraordinary culture and giving a true flavour of their strange and sometimes hostile world.

"Everywhere Thomson goes, he finds good tales to tell." --New York Times Book Review

One man goes in search of the lost cities of the Amazon in the Inca heartland.