La Huella OVNI: Brief Facts about El Dorado

• La Huella OVNI tells the story of El Dorado.
• We give you a short look into this famous city.
• Many movies and books have been inspired by it.

From old times, when Spain controlled what we now call Colombia, there was always a story about a place filled with gold named El Dorado.

A story of this legendary city of gold that you have probably heard once and even watched a movie about.

Even though people from Europe talked about this legend, they linked it to the gold things they found from the early cultures there.

Many tried to find this place filled with gold.

Searching for El Dorado

Urzúa, an explorer, tried to find «The Land of Cinnamon,» a place better than others, with roads, houses, and clothes all made of gold.

But in the land of stories, no one found this golden place.

That’s why Bogotá’s airport is named El Dorado. In 1940, pilots would say they were arriving at «El Dorado.»

Back then, the leaders of two big banks in Colombia made an important choice.

Changing How They Used Gold

They stopped turning all the gold they had into bars that were often sold to pay for wars and other projects.

Instead, they kept the gold to show as art and made a place to show it off.

That’s how the Gold Museum started. This museum has many special gold things.

One very interesting item is the «Balsa del Dorado.» This item had a strange trip before it came to the museum.

A Special Boat

Lázaro Fonte, a man who liked finding things in caves, found the «Balsa del Dorado» in 1969 near Bogotá, in a place named «páramo.»

This kind of land, in Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, is a bit like some areas in Bolivia and Peru.

Inside a strange rock that looked like an egg, Lázaro Fonte found a golden model of people on a wooden boat, with a leader in the middle holding out his hands.

This gold model is connected to the stories of the local Muisca people.

A Special Ceremony

They say their leader, Tabita, covered himself in gold and then went into a lake to give thanks to nature, coming out with no gold.

People thought that at the bottom of this lake, which was once emptied by an English group, there were treasures connected to the El Dorado story.

That’s how the «Balsa del Dorado» got its name. Lázaro Fonte kept it safe from thieves and from being sold outside the country.

In the end, this gold model was placed in the Republic Bank, showing the special story of El Dorado in Colombia.