BBC Horizon – The Secret of El Dorado

In 1542, the Spanish Conquistador, Francisco de Orellana ventured along the Rio Negro, one of the Amazon Basin's great rivers. Hunting a hidden city of gold, his expedition found a network of farms, villages and even huge walled cities. At least that is what he told an eager audience on his return to Spain. The prospect of gold drew others to explore the region, but none could find the people of whom the first Conquistadors had spoken. The missionaries who followed a century later reported finding just isolated tribes of hunter-gatherers. Orellana's story seemed to be no more than a fanciful myth

El Dorado (Spanish for "the golden one")
The name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dived into the lake Guatavita.
Later it became the name of a legendary "Lost City of Gold" that has fascinated - and so far eluded - explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors.
Imagined as a place, El Dorado became a kingdom, an empire, the city of this legendary golden king. Deluded by the legend, Francisco Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro would depart from Quito in 1541 in a famous and disastrous expedition towards the Amazon Basin; as a result of this, however, Orellana became the first person known to navigate the Amazon River all the way to its mouth.
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