El Dorado On The Move

El Dorado began to shift away from the icy Andes, towards the warmer Caribbean coast, following the colourful accounts of Martinez, a lieutenant of Diego de Ordaz, who in 1531 claimed to have been rescued from shipwreck, brought inland and entertained by El Dorado himself.

Upon hearing this, Diego de Ordaz promptly returned to Spain to request permission to explore the area between present day Colombia and Venezuela in search of the fabled golden city. Whilst unsuccessful in his search, he did discover the river Orinoco and unfortunately, after fending off countless attacks from the indigenous Caribs living along the river, had the same disastrous ending as most of our other intrepid explorers. He died on his return to Spain, under suspicious circumstances; with some believing that he may have been poisoned by his own crew.

Meanwhile, German explorer and governor of Venezuela, Philip von Hutten, was leading his own party south into the country following the account of local tribesmen, who had seen a city "with golden walls that glistened far away in the distance". Unfortunately, he never reached this shining city and also suffered an unsavoury demise many years later, beheaded at the request of the usurping Spanish governor Carvajal.

Soon after, El Dorado was on the move again and began shifting location towards present day Guyana, thanks to the Spanish Governor of Trinidad, Antonio de Berrio, who made three expeditions to the region in 1584, 1585 and 1591. Incidentally, de Berrio was the nephew of Jiménez de Quesada from our Colombian chapter. See how everything is starting to come together? Antonio de Berrio also died as a result of his various expeditions in search of El Dorado, but not before a violent encounter with our next explorer, Sir Walter Raleigh, and thus helpfully linking our history lessons quite nicely.