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The Search For Machu Picchu (3x11)

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In 1911, Hiram Bingham was a young scholar specialising in modern Latin American history at Yale University. He was 36-years-old, married to Alfreda Mitchell, an heiress to the Tiffany diamond empire, they had six children and lived in a thirty-roomed mansion on top of a hill. Bingham was a man who seemed to have all the comforts of life, but he was restless and driven. During a field trip to Peru in 1909, he was invited by his guide to see an ancient Inca site high up in the Andes Mountains. This set him on a path that would change his life forever. Bingham learned how in the sixteenth century, the great Inca Empire fled from the ferocious onslaught of Spanish Conquistadors and built a last stronghold deep inside the Amazon jungle. A place they named Vilcabamba. There, they made their final stand against their ruthless enemy, but with their death, the memory of where this last refuge was, disappeared. This, Hiraham Bingham thought, would be how he could make his name. He would lead an expedition to find Vilcabamba. And he did discover an extraordinary Inca city called Machu Picchu. It was hailed as the "Lost city in the Clouds," a spiritual refuge perching high on top of a sky-scraping mountain. Bingham was convinced he had found Vilcabamba. The news was a global sensation, and Hiram Bingham would go down in history as one of the all-time great explorers. But all was not as it seemed.