Love in the Time of Cholera

I read it four years ago on a trip to the Okanagan with my boyfriend at the time's parents. My hair was long and black then, and I remember towing around a ratty green shawl with me everywhere I went. I had picked up a Mexican nightgown on a trip to San Miguel that year, one of those little white things with a crocheted neck line. Aside from a bathing suit, it was the only thing I felt comfortable wearing, as it was loose enough to allow air to circulate on my sweaty skin. With the heat of the valley gripping every moment of that trip, my reading experience was enhanced to a point where I felt I was vacationing within Marquez's long drawn out love affair, rather than camping in a tent trailer in a little campsite outside Summerland B.C. The site was sheltered from the sun by trees. When I took breaks from reading I followed the small stream only meters from our tent, through bushes of baby breath, under a fallen tree, towards the lake. I'd wade through the running water and dive head first into the lake when I reached my miniature estuary.