Lake Guatavita
Guatavita ( Laguna de Guatavita ) is a small mountain lake northeast of Bogotá. The lake is about 3000 m altitude in the highlands of Cundinamarca. Guatavita has a diameter of 1.6 km and a circumference of about 5 km. He became famous due to the El Dorado myth.
Muisca and Eldorado
The Guatavita Lake was the most revered of the five sacred lakes of the Muisca, which should be inhabited by serpent deities all. The Muisca were a Native American people in Colombia today. According to an old Indian legend of the crater-like lake was formed after a huge rock ( Meteor ) fell from the sky and pierced through the earth.
Guatavita was probably actually the scene of the Eldorado - announcement (see there "Legend" ). Unknown, however, is how much of it true and what is invented.
Gold discoveries
On the bottom of the lake gold artifacts have been found already, but not as many as was conjectured by the legends. The artifacts include, inter alia tunjos that were discovered in other lakes, coins, emeralds, gold nose rings and cult objects from the 7th century.
Attempts to dry up the lake
1545 took the Spaniards Lázaro Fonte and Hernán Pérez de Quesada, brother of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, the former dry season and drew in just three months with pumpkin shells off the water. The water level fell by 3 m and was gold items and gold coins with a value of 3000 to 4000 pesos free.
1580 tried the Spanish merchant Antonio de Sepúlveda drain the lake. Along with about 8,000 Indians he wanted the bank " cut " and draining the water, but after the water level had dropped by about 20 m, collapsed the walls of the deep trench and blocked the drain. It killed hundreds of Indian workers. The project had to be terminated it. Antonio de Sepúlveda discovered some gold objects, such as disks or symbols of deities, and emeralds.
José Ignacio Paris ( Don "Pepe" Paris), a friend of Simon Bolivar, tried in the 1820s similar to Antonio de Sepulveda dry out through a drain the lake, but the company failed because of the poor excavation works and the lack of resources.
The British entrepreneur Hartley Knowles made it in 1898 with a tunnel to drain the water completely, but the exposed seabed was covered with a meter-thick layer of mud, which was not to enter. The next day they tried to remove the mud with shovels, but the sun hardened the mud floor. Shortly thereafter, the mud blocked the tunnel and the lake was filled with water again. Hartley Knowles discovered some properties worth about 500 pounds.
In 1965 the Colombian government declared the lake Guatavita a National Heritage site and thus ended all attempts to dry up the lake.