Zapatoca is the land where the German adventurer, some call him a bandit, Geo Von Lengerke, settled to consolidate a fortune and leave a large offspring, since many attribute more than 500 children scattered throughout the region.
This town in the department of Santander experienced an unusual boom with the arrival of the expeditionary born in 1827, but also a change of customs in a very parochial time and where life passed between working in the fields and praying the rosary.
In the Guane language, an indigenous town established in the region, Zapatoca means “Father’s Burial at the top of the river”, and since the town is in the roundabout of the Sogamoso river, many tombs of this ethnic group have been found there, which has given it half of his character to the people, because the other half comes from a far away land, back in the Kaiser’s domain.