Mompós Travel Guide

The Real Macondo of the 100 Years of Solitude, Welcome to the Garcia Marquez Heartland

There are those who believe that Gabriel Garcia Marquez had Mompos in mind when he started working on the Macondo of his opus 100 Years of Solitude. This sleepy colonial town on the banks of the Magdalena River has seemingly been abandoned by time, the colonial architecture is decaying in parts, the locals must all be related to the fictional Buendia family and the Bolivarian hstory of South America is central to the town's existence.

As an obligatory stop on the River journey from the Caribbean coast to the interior Mompos rose to fame in the colonial era. Wealthy families from Cartagena maintained houses in Mompos to take full advantage of the flow of contraband along the river on the gold, tobacco and alcohol route to and from Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Northern South America's liberator Simon Bolivar spent time here in Mompos - a fact which is detailed in gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel The General in His Labyrinth - and it is said that he raised an army of 400 Momposinos to join him to take Caracas. He famously declared "If to Caracas I owe my life, then to Mompos I owe my glory". The Bolivarian legend is very captivating but given the current Mompos resident's disdain for work it has been said that very few of the citizens actually made it to Caracas once they hit the colder highlands of Merida!

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