[chrisbrandow]

for a $500 plane ticket and a 4 hour drive, seems like someone has surely gone there by now, just to ground-truth this. Otherwise, seems like a fun (with plenty of risks, obvs) way of being "the first" to lay eyes on this.

[whartung]

I'm guessing you've never actually been in "the jungle". It's not hospitable at all.

The other thing is that that area of Mexico is just teeming with this stuff. There's just an untold boatload of "lost cities" in there. They can't dig and map the stuff they are working on, much less any of the numerous finds that have been made in the past 10-20 years.

"Oh, yea, yay, another lost Mayan city. Woo hoo."

[AlotOfReading]

A good chunk of Central America is like this. One person I know maintaining maps of historic Maya settlements was tracking thousands of known names, most of which were positionally located by rough distance estimates from some other coarsely located feature. Many didn't even have that, just a name in some historic document.

[stavros]

That's kind of like finding ancient stuff in Greece. You dig a hole, and there's some ancient pots and pans in there. It's gotten to the point where people who want to build houses just carry the ancient findings away in the night, because the antiquities service will otherwise deem your plot an archaeological site.

[EasyMark]

This type of thing happens in most countries. In the USA they actually have to hire bored archeologists to check things out as part of any contract from the federal government (and a lot of state governments) on anything that might have a hint of Native American relics.

[jaza]

It's sad if "lost cities" are becoming so common, that they're losing their romantic-exotic-intrepid charm. If lost cities ain't got it no more, what in this world does?

[Cthulhu_]

"4 hour drive" implies you can just drive into the jungle... that's not exactly how these things work.

[kansai]

For what it's worth, TFA does mention that the site is:

> "hidden in plain site", the archaeologists say, as it is just 15 minutes hike from a major road