Aracataca, located in the department of Magdalena in northern Colombia, is a river town, founded in 1885. It lies aside the river by the same name, whose headwaters are in the Sierra Nevada range of the northern Andes. The Aracataca River flows into the Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta a large swampy delta area on the Caribbean. Aracataca's climate is tropical: warm and humid year-round. The town is the birthplace of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and is widely recognized as the model for the mythical "Macondo" the central village in Garcia Marquez's masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude.