El Dorado: Lake Guatavita and the Legend

History, not legend. Bacatá, seat of the Muisca ruler called the zipa, is today's Funza. Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada's Spanish column founded modern Funza on 20 April 1537, on its search for El Dorado, and by the end of April had entered Bacatá. The zipa, however, had fled with his treasure. The Muisca had no gold mines of their own and got gold through trade.

Location precision: Bacatá's palace site is not precisely known; the pin marks the town of Funza, which occupies the former Bacatá.

History, not legend. The Sun Temple at Sogamoso, a large round structure of poles and clay with a reed roof, honoured the Sun god Sué. On the night of 4 September 1537 two of Quesada's soldiers, Miguel Sánchez and Juan Rodríguez Parra, entered with torches to gather treasure and accidentally set it on fire, destroying the temple. Spanish officials reported 40,000 pesos of fine gold found at Sogamoso.

Location precision: The original temple burned in 1537; the pin marks the Sun Temple article's coordinates in Sogamoso, not a surviving original.

Legend: the Muisca zipa, covered in gold dust, ventured out on a ceremonial raft of rushes and dived in, washing off the gold, while worshippers threw gold offerings into the water. History: Quesada was the first conquistador to reach the lake, possibly in June 1537. Pedro Simón placed the ceremony here in the early 17th century, and Juan Rodríguez Freyle in 1636 described it as the investiture of each new zipa. No conquistador ever saw it, and some experts doubt it happened here. The lake is circular, 19.8 hectares, 57 km northeast of Bogotá, and a focus of ecotourism.

Visitor guidance: The lake is a focus of ecotourism; check the current access rules before you go.

History, not legend. At the end of the sixteenth century a wealthy Bogotá merchant, with eight thousand local workmen, cut a great notch into the mountain on one side of the lake and lowered the water about sixty feet. Objects from the edges of the lake bed included an emerald the size of a hen's egg, but the central zone remains untouched. Later drainage attempts brought little more. Colombia placed the lake under legal protection in 1965.

Location precision: The sources say the notch lies on one side of the lake without naming the side; the pin repeats the lake's position.

History, with a rival legend. In the colonial period the three small glacial lakes at Siecha, in Guasca, were partly drained to extract Muisca gold. In the 1850s a golden raft was found in one lake. Liborio Zerda concluded the new zipa's initiation ritual might have been held here, not at Guatavita. The raft was lost when the transporting ship burned in Bremen harbour.

Location precision: The lakes are a group of three; the pin marks the Siecha Lakes article's coordinates, and the lake of the find is not pinned.

Visitor guidance: Access is restricted and visitor numbers are capped; check the current rules before you go.

History. In 1969 a peasant from Pasca, Cruz María Dimaté, found several pieces of gold and ceramics in a cave. The parish priest showed him a drawing of the lost Siecha raft and Dimaté confirmed the likeness. This second raft, made between about 1200 and 1400 AD, is traditionally read as the El Dorado ritual, though the scene is an interpretation, not a witnessed record. The town contains an archaeological museum.

Location precision: The cave is not named in the sources; the pin marks the town of Pasca.

History, and the closest thing to evidence. The Gold Museum houses the Muisca golden raft found in Pasca in 1969. It shows the ceremony of the new zipa, the basis for the El Dorado myth: the ruler stands at the centre of the raft, among chieftains adorned with gold and feathers. The collection holds 55,000 pieces, 6,000 on display, with bilingual descriptions of almost all exhibits. Its rooms include the "Offering Room", the "Offering Boat" and the "Lake".

Visitor guidance: Descriptions are bilingual for almost all exhibits.