La Dorada is both the last port on the riverboat’s eleven-day journey and the destination Florentino Ariza chooses when the lovers’ private voyage is threatened with an end. Its arrival turns Fermina Daza’s fear of being seen in public into the occasion for a new plan: instead of returning to ordinary travel, the ship will continue upriver under the cholera flag.

The Last Port on the Journey

The Captain tells the couple that they will reach La Dorada after lunch. Seen from their cabin, its houses stand on a promontory in pale sunlight, an appearance that seems to explain the name. On shore, however, heat steams like a caldron and tar bubbles in the streets. The boat does not dock at the town itself but across the river, at the terminal of the Santa Fe Railroad.

The arriving passengers make the riverbank feel suddenly exposed. Many have come from the Andean plateau by train, still wearing heavy coats and hats unsuited to the Caribbean heat; some have potato blossoms in their hair, already wilting. Amid the crowd, a very old beggar empties handfuls of pale chicks from his pockets. The chicks scatter across the dock and are trampled by hurried travelers who do not notice them. Fermina, absorbed by the spectacle, fails to see passengers boarding for the return trip.

Exposure and the New Plan

Among the returning passengers Fermina recognizes friends who had recently attended her in mourning. She retreats to the cabin, distraught at the prospect of being seen on a pleasure trip so soon after her husband’s death. The episode makes La Dorada more than a stopping place: the port brings the private journey into contact with the social world and its expectations of widowhood.

Florentino promises to find another way to protect her than keeping her shut in the cabin. During supper, he listens to the Captain discuss a business problem: boats carry cargo upriver but return empty, while the passenger traffic runs the other way. Florentino follows the discussion about differential fares to its end, then asks whether a ship could make a trip without stopping, cargo, passengers, or port calls. The Captain understands the proposal and tells him to put the order in writing.

Departure and Return as an Open Ending

Florentino signs. The little cargo is transferred, passengers are told there has been a mechanical failure, and they are sent onward aboard another company’s ship. The Captain agrees to the plan, asking only to stop at Puerto Nare to pick up Zenaida Neves, his old friend and secret love. At dawn the New Fidelity leaves without cargo or passengers, the yellow cholera flag flying from its mast; La Dorada has helped precipitate a voyage that is now organized around the lovers’ wish to remain together.

Later, when the Captain is troubled by the consequences of sailing under the cholera flag, Florentino looks out at the compass, the clear horizon, and the navigable waters, then directs him to keep going back to La Dorada. Fermina recognizes in his words the voice he had once had, and the Captain is struck by the force of his inspiration. The return is not a simple restoration of the original itinerary: La Dorada now marks the possibility of continuing their shared passage, with no ordinary destination able to bring it to a close.