As Colonel Aureliano Buendía faces the firing squad, he thinks about the day his father, José Arcadio Buendía, took him to discover ice. The firing squad narrative serves as a frame story for a chapter that is largely about the Colonel's father. A man named Melquíades, who becomes his close friend, comes with a group of wanderers on a regular basis to the rural village of Macondo, where the Colonel grew up, bringing marvels from the outside world. (The English translation of this chapter uses the inaccurate slur "gypsy" to describe the travelers.)

The wanderers bring new scientific discoveries to the village: magnets, a telescope, an astrolabe, a compass, an alchemical laboratory, and dentures. Over time, José Arcadio Buendía becomes more and more enamored with the inventions brought by the wanderers. He spends his wife's meager inheritance to acquire each new invention. Though he was one of the village founders and developed it as an “orderly” and idyllic town, once he gets each new item, he stops caring about community projects and even his own children.