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…