The River

In January of 1824, the Commodore Juan Bernardo Elbers, the founder of river navigation, registered the first steam boat to ply the river Magdalena, a forty horsepower primitive piece of junk called Fidelity.

More than a century later, one 7th of July at six o'clock in the afternoon, Doctor Urbino Daza and his wife accompanied Fermina Daza to board the boat which was to convey her on her first river voyage. It was the first to be made in the local shipyards, and Florentino Ariza had christened it New Fidelity, in memory of its glorious predecessor. Fermina Daza could never believe that that name, so meaningful for them, was really just a historical coincidence, and not just another whim of Florentino Ariza's chronic romanticism.

Love in the Time of Cholera