Centro Cultural Gabriel García Márquez

We dodged the rain and the flooded streets to get to our next stop - the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cultural Centre.

Gabriel (6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist known affectionately as Gabo or Gabito throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, particularly in the Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. He is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), which sold over fifty million copies.

When García Márquez died in April 2014, Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia, called him "the greatest Colombian who ever lived."

We paused to listen to a guy playing musical instruments he had made himself out of bamboo. I was particularly taken with the bamboo sax.

Our next stop was at the Carbon d Lena café where we tried Poker beer, and Gina taught us the traditional Colombian way to make a toast. To eat, we had tasting samples of barbecued veal, deep fried plantain, potato, and guacamole, all seasoned with aji picante.Read more