Slap bang in the middle of a an arid landscape, surrounded by nothing but sand and hills for miles around sits a ‘ghost’ hotel which was completely swallowed by the sand, only to be rediscovered 100 years later.
For decades the whereabouts of the Hotel Mar del Sud, in Buenos Aires, Argentina remained a mystery until an eagle-eyed filmmaker managed to uncover it after a four year search.
Construction of the hotel began in about 1889 with bricklayers using poor quality materials to build small rooms either side of a main courtyard.
The hotel is named after the nearby town Mar del Sud in the Buenos Aires district of General Alvarado with only 2,500 inhabitants.
Its location between the La Tigra stream and the La Carolina stream south of Miramar was chosen in part because the area is favoured by holidaymakers.
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A joint-stock company set up of four wealthy men, engineer Rómulo Otamendi, Rafael Herrera Vegas, Julio Goyena and Juan Bautista Otamendi, acquired 565 hectares of land southwest of Miramar in May 1888.
The group wanted to offer aristocratic families an exclusive summer destination with the Atlantic Ocean just metres away.
A railway line also promised to extend all the way to Mar del Sud bringing guests with it, but trains would not arrive in nearby Miramar until 1911 and the tracks never reached the town.
Questions remain as to whether or not the hotel ever really saw any success though records show its existence lasted at least two seasons.
The hotel also had to compete with the more luxurious Hotel Boulevard Atlántico built only a kilometre away on the opposite bank of the La Carolina stream.
In the intervening years, the Hotel Mar del Sud slowly but surely vanished beneath the sand, becoming an urban legend shrouded in mystery.
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That was until Argentinian documentary filmmaker Laureano Clavero, who grew up with the legend of the ghost hotel, set out to find it.
Using poor quality photos, a few appearances in late 19th century newspapers and interviews with older locals he managed to narrow his search down to a possible location.
He then marked different points on a map of Mar del Sud and narrowed his search down to the beach of El Remanso.
But a month-long expedition to find the hotel ended in failure even with the aid of a metal detector which he hoped would help him uncover nails, forks and spoons from the buried venue.
He later made a second attempt, adjusting the location and walking the dunes for hours until at about 2pm on a day in November 2010 he spotted crystals shining in the sun.
Mr Clavero realised they were window panes locals had broken decades ago to loot the few objects left inside the hotel.
Mr Clavero told Infobae: “The Hotel Mar del Sud was a legend I had been hearing about since I was very young. It obviously fed my imagination for a long time. When I finally managed to locate it after four years, it was like a dream come true.”
Since the discovery, Mr Clavero has teamed up with architect Pablo Grigera to write the book Hotel Mar del Sud: A Mystery Beneath the Sand.
Explaining its disappearance, Mr Clavero said: “The hotel was built on unstable terrain, with important movements of dunes that drag tons of sand every year.
“At that time, the dunes were not fixed as they are now by trees and different types of plants. This caused large quantities of sand to move from one side to the other.
“In the middle of these movements was the hotel, which was somehow swallowed up by the sands.”
But despite having found the hotel, he wants to explore further and hopes to establish a dig to find out what treasures might be hidden in the hotel’s basement.
He said: “It would be interesting to carry out a rigorous archaeological excavation in order to unearth once and for all all the mysteries that the Hotel Mar del Sud hides.”
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