A Town That Spent 25 Years Underwater

~

~

This is Villa Epecuen, an old tourist town

south of Buenos Aires that spent a quarter

of a century underwater. Established in the

1920s on the banks of a salt lake, the town

was home to over 5,000 residents and

a holiday destination to thousands more

vacationers from the Argentinian capital.

In 1985, a dam burst and buried the town in

33 feet of salt water, rendering it a modern-day

Atlantis. Initially, people waited on their roofs,

hoping for the water to recede. It didn’t, and

within two days, the place was a devastated ghost town.

In 2009, the waters began to recede and

what emerged resembles an apocalyptic world.

Evenly-spaced dead trees still line what used to be streets,

rusty bed frames poke out from concrete rubble and

sign posts point to nowhere.

Amazingly, one resident remained in this desolate place.

Pablo Novak was the only person not to leave his

hometown when the water swallowed it up in 1985.

He lives in a stone hut with a fridge and a basic cooker.

I guess there’s no place like home…