The city of gold

For almost three hundred years, men crossed rivers and mountains looking for a city made of gold. They called it El Dorado. Some of them never came back. The strange thing is that El Dorado was never a city at all.

The story began with a ceremony. Near a lake in the mountains, the new leader of the Muisca people covered his body in gold dust. He went out on the water on a raft, with gold and emeralds, and gave them to the lake. When he washed the dust off his skin, the ceremony was over.

The Spanish heard about the golden man and understood something different. They thought there was a city full of gold somewhere in the jungle. Expedition after expedition went south and east. They found rivers, mosquitoes and hunger, but no city.

Today you can visit that lake. It is small, round and very quiet. In the museum in Bogotá there is a tiny gold raft with the leader standing on it, exactly as the story says. The city of gold never existed, but the ceremony did.