The hand of man has not been idle here. Foolishly busy sometimes, sometimes the hand of man has done that for which it may be justly congratulated. They've built a reservoir up near lake Guatavita by drowning out a long valley. In the valley used to be the ancient, colonial town of Guatavita. In the 1960's they decided to drown the town and rebuilt it higher up the slope.

Not far north of Bogota is the lake of Guatavita. The lake, known as 'the womb of the world', was sacred to the native Muiscas people of the region. Lake Guatavita played an important part in the ritual by which a chieftain was installed, and this ritual became exaggerated into the myth of El Dorado.