Your constant effort and dedication are an example to everyone; thank you for always giving your best.Thank you, Mom and Dad

On the eastern bank of the Magdalena River, a few kilometers before its waters flow into the Caribbean, lies a small town called El Plato. A town where, like most places along the river's course, life begins early and comes to a standstill around midday due to the relentless heat, only to revive once the sun begins to set in the sky. There, most people make their living from fishing. At first light, they row the river, carrying a cast net and hoping to catch enough to sell and take home.

Among the fishermen, there once existed a particular man, an old man who left his house every day, motivated not by the need to earn a living but by the morbid curiosity of seeing those women who went to wash clothes on the riverbank. So, he would hide in the bushes and spend his mornings spying on unsuspecting young women.

Among the fishermen, there once existed a particular man, an old man who left his house every day, motivated not by the need to earn a living but by the morbid curiosity of seeing those women who went to wash clothes on the riverbank. So, he would hide in the bushes and spend his mornings spying on unsuspecting young women.

After a terrible scare one morning when a group of women almost noticed him, he decided to travel to Alta Guajira in search of a witch doctor who promised to solve all his problems. A potion that turned him into an alligator was the cure he obtained for his ailments.

But things didn't turn out so well. Perhaps as divine punishment for his lust, when the man drank the potion, he was transformed into an aberrant creature, half-man, half-caiman. Although he tried to take advantage of this, the women soon learned of the strange being's existence and stopped bathing in the river. Thus, he was condemned to become the caiman man, a creature hunted by the fishermen of the Magdalena River.

I believe that beyond the legend, Ignacio Piedrahíta may be, in a way, the alligator man; of course, not because of his body, but because of that morbid curiosity that motivated him to leave the comfort and routine of his life in Santa Elena to undertake a long journey following the course of the Magdalena River, with the intention of spying, not only on the beautiful young women bathing in the river, but on all the things that happen in the daily life on its banks and on the people who depend on its course.

In Gravido Río, his latest book published by EAFIT, Piedrahíta recounts the journey that began when he left home for the Alto de los Idols in Huila, and ended in Mompox, Bolívar, before returning home. This trip, which he made alone and in his car, passes through La Tatacoa, Armero, Puerto Berrío, and the Cienaga de Barbacoas, among other places that served as refuge for the author to play the role of the alligator man and spy on people's daily lives.

Throughout his story, the main character is always the river, and the secondary characters are the men and women he encounters, whose lives are, in one way or another, influenced by the Magdalena River. In this way, Piedrahíta becomes the personification of an omniscient narrator, and with his simple language, he travels through time and space to tell the story of the river's formation a few million years ago, through the eruptions of several volcanoes, and finally the history of the populations who crossed continents to end up inhabiting its banks.