"El Guamo" Reservoir, a town under water

over 4 years ago (Edited)

Greetings dear friends and photography lovers

Today I want to share some beautiful images that you can capture through the lens of my camera and that bring me beautiful and pleasant memories. On that occasion we were heading to the beautiful town of Caripe, and on other occasions I have talked about him, and what I love. It is a wonderful place nestled in the mountainous area of the Monagas state.

I remember that day, we had breakfast at the hotel and left very early in the city of Maturín, heading to Caripe. By that time we had already come a long way and we needed to stretch our legs a little, so we stopped. When I got out of the car I was impressed by the beautiful view, so I ran immediately to find my camera in the car.

To get to the place from where you take the shots, you had to go down a road that moved a little away from the road. I had not walked much when I realized, that there was a paved road and decided to take it since it was safer to walk, since, where the walking came from it was quite irregular. After a few minutes of walking, to my surprise I had to stop because the road came to an end, on the shores of the lake. You will say, and what is the problem in that? Well, the surprising thing is that the road followed, but submerged in the water. But that is not all, it turns out that when I looked up, it turned out that the road left, on the opposite shore of the lake, which I thought was extremely strange.

I was curious and asked a friend who was with us, if he had any idea where we were. He told me that he thought we were in the El Guamo reservoir, when he told me about my strange discovery, he told me that it was said that the reservoir had been built on a town. For that reason, the road he had traveled sank into the water and exited at the opposite end of the lake.

As it turned out, my friend was right, when I inquired I discovered that the reservoir was formed by building a dam on the Guarapiche River, specifically in an area called El Guamo, that's why its name. This dam was aimed at preventing possible flooding, caused by the floods of the Guarapiche, Colorado, Cocollar, and Cerro Negro rivers. For its construction, the valley that extends between the area called San Antonio de Maturín and a town called San Francisco had to be flooded. Yes, they had to move all the residents of San Francisco, to other nearby towns, to flood the entire area. All the people were under the water and I understand that the only thing that was not swallowed by the waters was their church, since it was located on a hill. The small church, colonial in appearance, remaining as a palpable memory of the sacrifice of a people, in order to avoid possible disasters due to floods.