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I had long wanted to visit Villa Epecuén, the ruins of the former popular tourist village in the west of Buenos Aires province in Argentina that met a tragic end succumbing to the rain on 10 November 1985 when the embankment gave way and the water completely covered the village.

A powerful southeast storm in the days following the heavy rains completed the work of destruction.

An immense flood destroyed the dream of so many tourists who took advantage of the immense natural fresh water pools to spend their holidays....

Today only ruins of that past splendour remain.

It had been inaugurated in 1821 when tourism was beginning to become popular in Argentina and, at the beginning, it was the favourite destination of wealthy families. Then, little by little, families of modest means also began to join in.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the arrival of the railway gave it an even greater boost. It was its golden age. Trains full of tourists had an obligatory stop in Villa Epecuén, where hundreds of tourists got off.

In its heyday it was said that its waters had healing powers, although in fact the lagoon that had these properties was the neighbouring lagoon of Carhué, with a high salt content that favoured the cure of bone and rheumatic diseases.

It actually took several years for the mud from the lagoon to be recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for its curative properties.

It had everything: family hotels and luxury hotels, restaurants for all budgets. With just 1,200 inhabitants, it was one of the main tourist centres in the region, with between 25,000 and 30,000 tourists arriving each summer season.

Remarkable numbers for the time, I am talking about the 1960s-1970s. It had 6,000 hotel beds (five times more than its inhabitants) and around 300 commercial exercises.

It even came to compete with the popular Mar del Plata, albeit on a smaller scale, and for less well-off families who could not spend too much money on holidays.

Practically at a time when business opening hours followed the traditional schedule, Epecuén kept all its shops open 24 hours a day.

In winter, of course, it was completely empty. It was only summer tourism. Some people, in boats, would go away from the shores of the lagoon and spend the day fishing.

There were always fears of flooding, as the village was almost at the same level as the lagoon. For this reason, waterworks to drain the lagoon were indispensable.

However, the military coup d'état in 1976 and the dictatorship that followed made it impossible to carry out the project. Those were hard years for Argentina in which the military junta was only concerned with repressing thoughts contrary to its ideology.

At the beginning of 1985 it rained in a few months the same amount as it normally rained in a year. The water gradually accumulated and the level of the lagoon began to rise. But what gave it the coup de grâce was the Sudestada of 10 November (a meteorological phenomenon characterised by intense rain with strong winds and waves that especially affects the Rio de la Plata).

In a few hours the town was completely flooded and the general evacuation of the population began. Everyone took what they could.

The embankment gave way and the water began to enter the village, slowly and inexorably. The inhabitants began to cover doors and cracks where the water could pass through with sandbags, but the water was advancing. Within hours the hotels were covered with a metre of water.

The underground water table in the lagoon broke and water began to seep to the surface. Despite the fact that there was no more rain, the water began to rise at a rate of one centimetre per hour.

People living in the higher parts of the village returned to their homes in the hope of getting back on their feet. But the water continued to advance, slowly and inexorably. Until it was time for them too to leave.

In less than a month, Villa Epecuén was transformed from a flourishing and lively tourist centre into a devastated place, a ghost town.

The glorious years of Villa Epecuén had been, after a few months, submerged under seven metres of water.

Twenty years after that tragic 1985, the water gradually began to recede and the former residents who had settled in Carhué and other neighbouring towns wanted to return, only to find a devastating, surreal landscape.

Their eyes could not get used to that tide of memories, of vestiges of a splendid past and of projects that could not be.

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In southern Argentina, the country that includes the climates of six continents, there is a planet: Patagonia.

Fuente

Lakes as big as seas, glaciers unique in the world, mountains covered with forests and perennial snows, huge windy and semi-desert expanses, the southernmost city in the world and waters of oceans that eternally confront each other, find each other, fight and amalgamate: this is this huge triangle of land where America ends.

Peninsula Valdes a naturalistic microcosm of incalculable ecological value.

In these coasts a naturalistic microcosm of incalculable ecological value, the Valdes Peninsula , projects its beaches towards the open sea where, an imaginary border between the Antarctic waters and the South Atlantic, the right whale arrives at the beginning of the austral winter (May ) and reaches the Gulf of San Josè and partly the Golfo Nuevo to perpetuate its species in an almost uncontaminated natural area and where the observer can interpret, enjoy or study these giant mammals, but always learn to respect them if not to love them. .

Belonging to the cetacean family, whose first fossils found date back to the Eocene period that began about 55 million years ago, there are currently 11 species of whales.

Eurobalena australis (from the Greek "eu" which means true, and australis, from the Latin "south") has a curved body, it has no dorsal fin.

The head occupies 25% of the total body and is covered in some points of keratinous callosities generated by the skin, where parasites are usually found. The breath coming out of two vents drawing a "V" shaped spray in the area is usually about 5m high. The left side is higher than the right.

Whales generally jump up to ten or more times in a row. When they hit the water, the roar can be heard from great distances.

Females at 3 or 4 years old, when they reach sexual maturity, reach 13 meters in length; males are slightly shorter. The maximum length observed in specimens in the Valdes Peninsula is 16 meters for females and 15 for males.

The newborn babies are 5 and a half meters long and during the first months of life they grow 35 millimeters per day, up to a maximum weight of about 30 or 40 tons.

The jaw bone forms a curve from which come out between 230 and 380 horny beards (the baleen).
Each plate is about 2.40 m long and consists of a short, hard hair. These plates are used to filter foods.

The whale opens its mouth by swimming towards the food, composed mainly of small plankton crustaceans, fills its mouth and closes it by pushing the tongue towards the palate in order to generate an internal pressure that causes the liquid to escape through the baleen that hold the solid part.

The migration of the right whales.

Although the Valdés Peninsula is not the feeding area of ​​this species, some activities of this type can be recorded at the end of the season (October / November), before the migration to the real feeding areas begins, to this day. not yet known with total certainty.

The gestation is 12 months and the lactation period also. A whale breeds every three years. The males, in proportion, have the largest testicles of all mammals (about 500 kg. Each).
Mating occurs belly to belly. Females who do not wish to mate go belly up, but males, sometimes in groups, try to turn them around.

Reproductive females return to the Valdes Peninsula area at three-year intervals, while adult males tend to return annually.

Since 1972, studies on sound, ethology and individual identification have been carried out.

Scholars use the characteristic white protuberances (calluses), whose shapes are different in each whale, like our fingerprints.

More than 22% of the world's whale population is arriving.

With this method it has been estimated that the population of the southern right whale visiting the Valdés Peninsula exceeds 600 specimens, which represents 22% of the world population.

In Patagonia, in the province of Chubut, in the Valdès Peninsula, in the locality of Puerto Peràmides, between the months of May and December, the opportunity is offered to spot the southern right whale and to get excited when one anticipates the meeting from a distance. Seeing a whale with its whale is an unusual and unforgettable sight.

They represent the great attraction of the Valdès Peninsula where they reach the coast showing themselves in evolutions and jumps that would be said to be worthy of a classical ballet despite the size and enormous weight of the "dancers".

Six specialized companies with safe and comfortable boats carry out the sightseeing tour which lasts about an hour depending on the proximity to the whale coast. The boats approach at a prudent distance and sometimes the whales pass under the boat. Tourists thus take the opportunity to photograph them as the transparency of the ocean waters allow it.

In this context, it should be noted that the months from May to December represent the season of love for the magnificent cetaceans that populate the Patagonian seas, but it is always the season of love for nature for the Argentines who, with a great ecological spirit, they declared them a "Natural Monument".