"The myth began in the 1530s in the Andes of present-day Colombia, where conquistador Gonzalo JimĂ©nez de Quesada first found the Muisca (1537), a nation in the modern day Cundinamarca and Boyacá highlands of Colombia. The story of the Muisca rituals was brought to Quito by Sebastian de Belalcazar's men; mixed with other rumors, there arose the legend of El Dorado, The Golden Manâ€" el indio dorado, the golden Indian, and el rey dorado, the Golden King. Imagined as a place, El Dorado became a kingdom, an empire, the city of this legendary golden king.
In search of this legendary kingdom, Francisco Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro would depart from Quito in 1541 to the Amazon Basin in the most fateful and famous expedition to find El Dorado." (from Wikipedia.org)