Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

Disaster. Absolute Disaster

At 16:30 that day, I went to Guerrero's house.

"Hello, Teniente, Do come in," he said, inviting me to his house.

After I took a seat, I looked at the maps on the shelves and the huge portrait of Simon Aristizábal Bolivar on the wall.

We had a general conversation for a while about the weather, the Police and the city. As we were talking, Guerrero brought a mug and poured out some coffee for me.

"What brings you here, Teniente?" asked Guerrero, after offering me some coffee.

"I want you to help me understand how Princesa Irene will be behaving after the dam collapse? I'm going to be posted in the rainforest, and I need your help with understanding how this river would behave. This understanding will help me with my duty," I said.

He thought for a while. He then answered: "Princesa Irene? She's a tricky one"

"Follow me," said Guerrero as he got up and took me into a room filled with maps in the Gutiérrez' family house.

I put my mug of coffee on the table and followed him as he took to the room.

When I entered that room, I saw that all sorts of maps of Bolivia were inside that huge room in huge shelves. There was a table in the center of the room.

Guerrero was looking for a particular map. "It's quite dusty in here. I never really used this room much after retiring." He chuckled. "Here it may be," he said drawing near to one shelf. He coughed twice because of the dust in the room. "No, it's not here." He moved to another rack and lifted a few pieces of brown paper. "Here it is!" He pulled out a huge map. After unfolding the map on the table, which was laden with dust, he said, "This is the map of Princesa Irene. It's a very old map. Señor Aristizábal and I used to use this same map to study River Redirection. Those were good times!" The old man fell into a fit of nostalgia, going in a tangent, "Really they were!"

"Can we talk about the map?" I wanted to ask but didn't. As much as I wanted the old man to be done with all the talk about his childhood and college life, I didn't want to disrespect him.

"Oh sorry for wasting your time. Where was I?" the old man said, coming back from his trip down memory lane.

"I would love it if you could tell me how would the river function after the collapse of La Madre De Princesa Irene."

"Oh, La Madre - " He paused for a moment to think. He took an unsharpened pencil from the side of the map and drew imaginary patterns in the air. He was muttering to himself the whole while when he did that. "So this river you see here is Princesa Irene." He pointed out the different features of the map. "The spot here is La Madre De Princesa Irene." He first showed me the entire course of the river Princesa Irene from the point where La Madre was located. The river continued south, down the rainforest until it journeyed south-westwards outside the rainforest towards the dam near Machareti. Before going out of the rainforest there was an area where a distributary flowed out eastwards from Princesa Irene and fed the river Muchachita (whose source was in one of the springs in the rainforest). "That's Muchachita, while her source is somewhere there, most of her water comes from Princesa Irene's one and only distributary," he said while referring to the course of the river. "Many kilometers upstream towards the Northwest must be La Abuela De Princesa Ire-" Guerrero forgot where he saw the spot where La Abuela De Princesa Irene was on the map. He used a pencil to follow the course of Princesa Irene once again. Impatience began to seize the best of me. "Here it is!" he said pointing with excitement, like a child who found a coin he long lost. "Here is La Abuela De Princesa Irene." He cleared this throat and coughed into his sleeve twice. Then with a croaky voice, he resumed, "So since only La Madre De Princesa Irene has collapsed, the danger is the swelling of its banks. This means that all the banks of this river now will be swollen. The river will be large now, larger than how it used to be. Most of the flooding will be in the rainforest."