Rumours current among the Indians of Peru referred to a great city or cities somewhere in the central plains to the east of the Andes which abounded in gold. The Spaniards themselves believed that a large body of Inca had fled into the interior at the time of the Spanish invasion of Peru, and that they had carried with them much treasure and had founded a great empire.

Another legend, known to the Indians for many years, but which seems to have come to the notice of the Spaniards about 1535, concerned El Dorado, or the "gilded man". It was said that once or twice a year this legendary king, his body covered with powdered gold, appeared before his people by a lake high up amid the mountains. Thus gilded and resplendent, he would push off in a raft for the centre of the lake where he would throw into the water offerings of gold and other precious things. After this he plunged into the lake and bathed in it.

It seems likely that the legend was based on a religious rite actually performed at Lake Guatavita in the highlands of Bogota but which had probably ceased some fifty years before the Spaniards came to hear of the story. The legend, as it was handed down, became increasingly confused with other legends. It led the Spaniards to seek in the central plains to the east of the Bogota highlands a golden city by the name of Manoa and a golden king by the name of El Dorado.

Other explorers sought for wealthy kingdoms far to the south-west in the lands watered by the upper tributaries of the Amazon. But gradually attention focused more and more on the search for Manoa del Dorado, as this legendary city came to be called; and as the central plains were explored without success, so in the minds of adventurers and explorers the site of the fabulous city of Manoa was moved progressively eastward.

The man responsible for finally fixing the site of El Dorado's mythical city within the boundaries of present-day Guyana was Antonio de Berrio, the Spanish Governor of Guyana and Trinidad. After three expeditions in 1584, 1585, and 1590, and after a further expedition in 1593 by his lieutenant, Domingo de Vera, Berrio concluded that the city of Manoa was close to the sources of the Caroni river.

The view that Manoa was situated behind the mountains of Guyana was given further weight by the stories of Juan Martinez, a Spanish survivor of an earlier expedition, who, after living for ten years among the Indians, turned up in Margarita about 1586, claiming that he had been taken to the golden city. He described it as a region of the Parima and Rupununi.