 Following the success of others of his works such as One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera , García Márquez decided to write about the " Great Liberator " after reading an unfinished novel about Bolívar by his friend Álvaro Mutis . He borrowed the setting — Bolívar 's voyage down the Magdalena River in 1830 — from Mutis . After two years of research that encompassed the extensive memoirs of Bolívar 's Irish aide @-@ de @-@ camp , Daniel Florencio O 'Leary , as well as numerous other historical documents and <unk> with academics , García Márquez published his novel about the last seven months of Bolívar 's life . 
