Vilcabamba, the pueblo where immortality is a dead art

I’d like to think that the two days I spent in Vilcabamba added two years to my life, but that’s probably not the case. Part 1 Reader’s Digest was the first to expose the sacredness of Vilcabamba, a town nestled in the mountains of Ecuador, about 1,500 metres above sea level. In the 1950s, the […]

Rum, encyclopedias, and sancocho: A lifelong friendship with Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It’s a September evening in Aracataca, Colombia, and, after an afternoon thunderstorm violently shakes the tropical pueblo, I find myself at the home of Carlos Nelson Noches, who proudly describes himself as the only one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s childhood friends who is still alive today. Noches lives directly across the street from Casa Museo […]

One month on: Colombia’s failed peace deal is testing a country’s unity

I arrived in Colombia on September 4 at 2:00 AM local time and left on October 1 at 8:50 AM local time. During those 27 days, I took part in countless conversations about the country’s peace deal, an accord between the government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) that held the power to end Colombia’s […]