Monday, February 18, 2019

The Chernobyl of Chingaza.

Whoa!  All Stop!
As Luke and I reached the bottom of the Chingaza mountains, we saw a deserted wasteland.  A massive abandoned factory tucked into a corner of a valley.


It was straight from a creepy horror film, so we followed the script and we 'snuck up' on its massive bulk.
 Beyond it, we saw a mountain cut away and now abandoned.

We had stumbled upon the Samper concrete factory, the first and formerly largest concrete factory in Colombia.  Abandoned now for about 20 years, the factory and adjacent small town are now ghosts.
There's a big story here.  And others have told it better than I.  Here's a link to start.
Luke discovered that the factory's shut down was related to its potential for pollution of the adjacent water sources for Bogota.
The factory was started about 1909, in large part to support the construction of the area's first hydroelectric dam.  (Here's a link to that part of the story.  See page 281.)

I noted that the Mexican cement conglomerate CEMEX bought Samper at about the same time as the factory was shut down.
Nor were Luke and I the first to photograph.  Here's a National Geographic take (follow link).
But I think Luke's photos are better.  It'd be moving to go back when the light is just perfect to tell a scary story (with permission, of course).  ;-)

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