Colombia: Laguna Guatavita
About 60km north from Bogota lies the famous picturesque Laguna Guatavita, a round lake high up in the Colombian Andes. The lake looks like a volcanic crater, but actually is a sinkhole. A steep hike over to the rim is rewarded with spectacular panoramic views of the lake. What is much more interesting – this is the lake associated with the legend of El Dorado (the Golden One). According to the legends, Guatavita is the sacred lake where the ceremony of dusting the king with gold and then washing the gold off in the lake took place. When the Spanish arrived, the indigenous kings supposedly dumped all their immense gold possessions into the lake. For over 300 years, the Spanish tried to unsuccessfully drain the lake in search of gold, finding many gold artifacts and figurines – they tried to empty the lake manually and then cut a side in the rim, but only managed to slightly reduce the waters. In 1800s, the British tried it with renewed vigor, completely draining the lake off water just to find a massive layer of silt that immediately solidified into cement-like state when water was drained. To this day, the El Dorado gold has not been found and is believed to be in the lake, which is now protected as Colombian national treasure.
