With Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Cartagena, Colombia. 2011.
In 2011 Anne, our good friend Nathalie and I traveled to Cartagena, Colombia. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has a home there. It is a walled compound by the sea. Locals complained how he rarely stayed there, although every taxi ride somehow found its way past it.
“He lives there,” the driver would say.
But he rarely did, preferring Mexico City, Havana and Paris.
Cartagena is a beautiful city.
It is the birthplace of my old and dearest friend, Francisco Garcia, who is no longer with us.
And it is the location that Garcia Marquez fictionalized as Macondo in 100 Years of Solitude.
I read 100 Years of Solitude while in Cartagena, so my memory of the great novel and my memory of the place are now inseparable.
Fred Klonsky 
Fred, remembering the great time we had in Cartagena.
I think of it often.