It is 1856 and a whaler approaches Paita, the last redoubt of Peru - a rusty fishing port where only poverty and oblivion are to be found. Among the ship's crew is Herman Melville, a young sailor hatching up the idea of writing a story of a whale called Moby Dick. In Paita lives a woman who, thirty years before, had shocked the continent and whose name had been erased from history books. She is Manuela Saenz, Simon Bolivar's most passionate lover. An everlasting Latinamerican hero, Bolivar commanded the great Latin American Revolution during the first half of the 19th century. Since then, he has been known as "The Liberator."