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50 free El Dorado trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This El Dorado trivia quiz covers the myth of the golden city from a chief powdered in gold dust to a lake that stayed on maps for a century without existing. The easy questions ask what el Dorado literally means, which continent the legend belongs to, which people it is associated with, which sacred lake received their offerings and which animated film sent two con men looking for it. Then it works through the conquistadors: Dalfinger and Federmann for the Welsers, Quesada's salt trail into the highlands, the three armies that met at Bogotá, and the first written appearance of the phrase in 1539. The hard end is for people who like their history tangled: the tumbaga alloy of Muisca gold, the raft found in a cave in 1969, the 1562 licence to drain Guatavita, Orellana abandoning Pizarro and sailing the Amazon, Philipp von Hutten and the Omagua, Aguirre's mutiny and letter to Philip II, Berrio's three expeditions, Raleigh's Discovery of Guiana and fatal second voyage, Lake Parime, Humboldt's debunking, Voltaire's Candide and Poe's poem. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on El Dorado, the Muisca raft, Lake Guatavita, Lope de Aguirre, Walter Raleigh and The Road to El Dorado before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our conquistadors, Colombia and lost cities quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name 'el Dorado' originally referred to what?
A gold-dusted ruler
Only later did the name transfer to a lost city or kingdom of immense wealth.
Q 02The Muisca, the people behind the legend, lived on which high plateau in present-day Colombia?
Altiplano Cundiboyacense
They were skilled goldsmiths and cotton weavers who built in wood, organised into independent chiefdoms.
Q 03Lake Guatavita, the sacred lake of the ritual, lies roughly how far northeast of Bogotá?
57 km
It is nearly circular and covers about 19.8 hectares in the municipality of Sesquilé.
Q 04Which conquistador led the Spanish expedition that reached and conquered Muisca territory in 1537?
Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada
A lawyer by training, he had followed a trail of rock salt up from the Magdalena River.
Q 05Where is the Muisca raft, the golden artefact linked to the legend, now kept?
Museo del Oro, Bogotá
It was found in 1969 in a cave near Pasca and shows a chief on a raft surrounded by attendants.
Q 06Most 'gold' objects crafted by the Muisca were actually made of tumbaga, an alloy of gold and what?
Copper
The Muisca had no gold mines of their own and traded salt and textiles for the raw metal.
Q 07Which two titles were held by the most powerful Muisca rulers, in the south and north respectively?
Zipa and zacque
The Spaniards captured the zacque at Tunja, seizing the largest single haul of the whole conquest.
Q 08Which German banking family had been granted the governorship of Venezuela by Charles V, sending Dalfinger and Federmann inland?
The Welsers
They held it as security for a loan and hoped above all to find a passage to the Pacific.
Q 09When Federmann's men were shown what looked like a great inland sea, what were they actually looking at?
The flood-prone llanos plain
He returned to Coro empty-handed and was banished for four years for abandoning his post.
Q 10How did Ambrosius Dalfinger, the first European to push into Venezuela's interior, die in 1533?
Shot with a poisoned arrow
He had followed the salt trail to 12,000 feet before turning back.
Q 11Before 'El Dorado', what name did Spaniards use for the legendary golden kingdom, after a river Diego de Ordaz was told to follow?
Meta
A Carib prisoner told Ordaz he would find a kingdom ruled by 'a very valiant one-eyed Indian'.
Q 12In 1534, whose captured chief, from a land 12 days' march north of Quito, was dubbed 'el indio dorado'?
Sebastián de Belalcázar's
He may simply have been wearing golden armour or ornaments; the province of Popayán was found as a result.
Q 13Quesada's expedition set out in April 1536 from which Spanish colony, following the Magdalena River?
Santa Marta
At La Tora he spotted rock salt cakes and guessed they came from a richer society uphill.
Q 21Which Muisca mother goddess was said to have emerged from a lake and returned to it as a serpent?
Bachué
Lakes were central to Muisca religion, and gold and emeralds were left at their shores as offerings.
Q 22Gonzalo Pizarro's 1541 expedition east from Quito was lured by reports of a valley full of which spice?
Cinnamon
He found a few cassia trees, tortured locals who could not direct him to El Dorado, and pressed on to the Coca River.
Q 23Which of Pizarro's officers took a boat downstream for food, never returned, and became the first European to sail the length of the Amazon?
Francisco Orellana
He was meant to be back within twelve days; instead he emerged into the Atlantic.
Q 14How was the Muisca's most sacred temple at Sogamoso destroyed?
Two looting soldiers' torches set the grass matting alight
Officials still reported 40,000 pesos of fine gold recovered there.
Q 15Which city did Quesada, Belalcázar and Federmann jointly found on 29 April 1539 after their three armies met on the plateau?
Bogotá
Quesada, the lawyer, defused the rival claims with a contract and all three sailed to Spain to argue their cases.
Q 16The first appearance of the phrase 'el dorado' in the historical record comes from the treasurer of which expedition?
Belalcázar's, leaving Popayán
Gonzalo de la Peña testified in July 1539 that they had left 'in search of a land called el dorado'.
Q 17According to Oviedo's 1541 account, the golden chief stuck the gold dust to his body using what?
A gum or resin
He supposedly washed it off each night and did so every day of the year.
Q 18Which 17th-century writer first described the Guatavita ceremony as an investiture ritual for each new zipa?
Juan Rodríguez Freyle
Writing in 1636, he claimed his source was the nephew of the last Indigenous ruler of Guatavita.
Q 19Who received a royal licence in 1562 to drain Lake Guatavita, the first documented attempt?
Antonio de Sepúlveda
He pulled some gold and emeralds from the exposed mud; an English-financed operation tried again in the early 1900s.
Q 20In what year was the Muisca raft discovered in a cave near Pasca?
1969
A similar object found at Lake Siecha in 1856 was later destroyed in a fire.
Q 24Which Amazonian people, encountered by Orellana, became the focus of later El Dorado searches, including Ursúa's?
The Omagua
Von Hutten was told their chief owned life-sized effigies of solid gold.
Q 25German nobleman Philipp von Hutten and Bartholomeus Welser met what fate on returning to Coro from their El Dorado quest?
Beheaded in a Spanish revolt against the Germans
Von Hutten had already been badly wounded attacking an Omagua village on the Guaviare River.
Q 26Why did Charles V suspend all El Dorado expeditions in 1550?
For a debate in Spain on their legitimacy
The suspension lasted almost a decade, until Pedro de Ursúa got permission in 1559.
Q 27Which mutineer murdered Pedro de Ursúa in 1561, styled himself 'Wrath of God' and declared war on Philip II?
Lope de Aguirre
Nicknamed El Loco, he was killed by his own men at Barquisimeto after trying to conquer Peru.
Q 28Who played Aguirre in Werner Herzog's 1972 film Aguirre, the Wrath of God?
Klaus Kinski
Édgar Ramírez later played him in Disney's Jungle Cruise in 2021.
Q 29How many Spaniards set out with Ursúa's Amazon flotilla in September 1560?
370
A secondary aim was to give idle veterans of Peru's civil wars something to do — which is how Aguirre came aboard.
Q 30Quesada's final El Dorado expedition of 1569 left with 300 Spaniards and 1,500 Indigenous people. How many soldiers came back?
About 50
He was gone two and a half years and 'achieved nothing', but his will still ordered his heir to keep searching.