The homes of famous writers are disappointing. Often, you see the famous desk, and that’s about it. There are exceptions: for example, Pushkin’s home in St Petersburg is interesting because they have the blooded waistcoat he wore during his fateful duel. Hemingway’s house in Cuba is intriguing because it is so macho – pistol, rifles, leather everywhere – you conclude he must have been secretly gay.
Sadly, I can report that the home of Gabriel García Márquez in remote little Aracataca, in Colombia, is predictably disappointing. They don’t even have the desk. They’ve got the bed where he soiled his nappy – allegedly his first childhood memory – and half a kitchen. A visit takes ten minutes, as does a tour of his tedious hometown.
‘Mompox does not exist, sometimes we dream of her, but she does not exist.’
But if, like me and millions, you’re a big fan of ‘Gabo’, the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude – now being broadcast in a TV version on Netflix – I have some consoling news. Four hours south of Aracataca is the town that, it is believed, inspired the magical realism of the book. The town that became ‘Macondo’. And this town, Santa Cruz de Mompox (named for an indigenous tribal chief), is one of the most enchantingly peculiar, dreamy, untouched, sensuously lovely towns I have ever visited, anywhere in the world, in several decades of travel.
At first glance, Mompox is quite simple. A handsome grid of Spanish colonial streets, alongside a grand and whispering waterway: the River Magdalena. This river was once the source of Mompox’s wealth. Trade was so plentiful it built all these noble churches, palaces, and warehouses.
The other source of affluence was, paradoxically, Mompox’s remoteness. In the 17th and 18th centuries, English pirates attacked Colombia’s coast so successfully that the prosperous gentry decamped from Cartagena and Santa Marta: heading upriver, and far inland, to Mompox. And there they remained, and yawned, and spent their cash, and slowly mouldered in the sun.
At one point, Mompox was practically the capital of Colombia (or New Granada). The great Liberator Simón Bolívar stayed here maybe eight times. But halfway through the 19th century, the river silted up, and they built actual roads, and cities in more sensible places, and thus Mompox became the backwater of backwaters. The town took on an atmosphere of beautiful languor, like an exquisitely pretty young Cambridge graduate lying on a grassy green quad, her examinations finished, and nothing but summer ahead.
If you do make it here, don’t expect to do much. By day, Mompox mainly swings in a hammock and sips guanabana juice and chilled Colombiana beer; at dusk, people bring rocking chairs out into the plazas and pavements, or down to the placid riverbank. They sit and stare at the rippling waters. I read about this rocking-chair habit before I got to Mompox – via a gruelling six-hour car journey from Cartagena – and I presumed it was hyperbole. It’s not.
Despite the total lack of touristic activities – and a similar lack of big hotels, fancy restaurants, Starbucks, KFCs, major supermarkets, crime, or any sprawling suburbs – Mompox is never boring. It is delightfully, compellingly weird. On my second night here, as kids played in the main square near the pillared riverside palace once occupied by the famous naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, I saw a massive owl. In the middle of a town? I became so obsessed with this I noted down: ‘just seen a massive fucking owl’, and then got Google to translate this into Spanish (almost no one speaks English) so I could ask the concierge in my cute boutique hotel. If the owl is still present when you visit, here’s the handy translation: ‘Hola, acabo de ver un búho fucking enorme en la plaza principal, ¿es normal?’
On my third day, which managed to be even hotter than the first two, I took a boat ride on that river. The rides are easy to find: in laid-back Mompox, you basically just show up by the colonnaded old market, where huge iguanas strut down the historic steps, and where they sell – if you can wake the sellers – big straw hats, sweet Momposinos wine, and ice-cold lulo juice. Then you climb in the boat – an afternoon trip is best, as the heat ebbs – and set out onto one of the world’s epic waterways.
At first, my trip was unexciting, even if the river breeze was welcome. But as we ducked into backchannels, crossed torpid lakes, and threaded through lilied meanders and overhanging river-woods, it got ever more marvellous. The birdlife was fervent: ospreys, toucans, kingfishers, blue herons. With every bend, fish leapt from the water in dazzles of sardiney silver. Fishermen don’t have to do much to haul in fine catches, so they just stand there, knee-deep, and wave at the boats. Locals get about in dug-out canoes, their children splashing happily in the waters.
Eventually, we turned around and headed home to Mompox. I was looking forward to my supper of catfish and Colombian rice at the water’s edge (Mompox gets just enough tourists to justify maybe a dozen bars and good restaurants – that is to say, it’s perfect). But then the boatman stopped, and we dawdled, and I wasn’t sure why. Until I realised he was waiting for the sun to set over the unreal town.
When it did, Mompox became a kind of twilit, tropical Venice, made of purples and magentas and burning umbers, all reflected in the lapping waters, creating one of the most moving townscapes I have ever seen. Then I got off the boat and headed for my fish supper. The owl was still there, hovering above the haughty iguanas.
In one of his novels, Gabriel García Márquez has a character talk of Mompox. The character says: ‘Mompox does not exist, sometimes we dream of her, but she does not exist.’ I can attest that this is not true: wonderfully, she does exist, albeit on the shimmering, watery edge of reality.
Sean travelled with Journey Latin America. They offer multiple different tours to Colombia.
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