Rain all over

The weather has become unstable as of late, maybe a sign that the tranquil workings of summer's furnace are finally being disturbed by the proximity of the equinox (still more than three weeks away). In simpler terms, it's hot, but it's not sunny and hot all the time — sometimes it's just clammy.

It's softly raining as I write this. Right now I should've been at the Flag Memorial, preparing to watch the reenactment of the first hoisting of the Argentine flag, which took place on the banks of the Paraná River exactly 196 years ago. But it rained cats and dogs right after noon, and then it started again a couple of hours ago, so they called it off, together with other outdoors activities planned for tonight. Of course, the rain did not bring any relief to the heat — it's the same steam-bath as yesterday. With a little more steam.

Like most people I know, I'm a bit sick of this summer. I'm overwhelmed by the heat, the low pressure, the humidity. I don't have the strength to go out and walk and take pictures, or to try resuming outdoors exercise. I spend way too much time sitting before the computer, but I can't think. So I don't have much to tell, and I don't feel like sitting down to write it down, plus I'm having real heavy work at the office. All of this is why I'm blogging intermitently, instead of every day.

The office — that's a real mess. For obvious reasons I can't reveal too much about that here, but let's say conflict is bubbling just below the surface of the provincial administration — the bitter underground conflict between those who want to get to work and finally see there's someone paying attention to their work, and those who have never worked or wanted anything but to suck the state's tit and devote office days to gossip over coffee, and now feel threatened but can't express it openly for fear of being discovered, even though everybody knows what they are. Yes, folks, such are the deep human dramas you find in our public offices.

I intend to wait for more cheerful topics, or at least interesting ones, before I write one more blog post. Let us hope together...

Goodbye for a while

My online life has been pretty much inactive lately because of the holidays, and especially the terrible heat; it's difficult to do anything during the daytime, and for the most part I've been shifting to a routine of sleeping four of five hours at night, going to work, returning home under the scorching sun, having a light lunch and then dragging myself back to my room to get three more hours of sleep and/or reading light fiction while the afternoon rages at temperatures over 35 °C (that's 95 °F in FFU), then sometimes using the small pool in my garden to cool the fire, and finally having dinner as the sun comes down at an artificially late hour. During all that time I don't use the computer much; the room it's in has no air conditioning, so I keep the PC on only as needed, for short periods.

And now, I'm going on vacation next Sunday, so you'll have to learn to live without this blog for about three weeks. I'll begin by revisiting Malargüe in southern Mendoza, and then proceed to Neuquén, Junín de los Andes, and possibly the small town of Piedra del Águila by the Limay River. It's doubtful that I'll have Internet access or the time to use it during that time, except in Neuquén City, so you'll have to wait to read my report and see pictures and stuff. Don't miss me!

Summer time

28 ºC	40 ºC

Summer seems to be arriving, finally. After the coldest winter in decades, and a cool spring with lots of sunny breezy days, it seems tomorrow, December 21, will be hot as hell, as befits the official day of the start of summer (the actual beginning of summer, so to speak, is the solstice, which this year falls on December 22 — at about 3 AM in Argentina, if you want to know that much).

Yours truly is not a man of extremes. I didn't like last winter, and I don't think I'll like this summer with tropical temperatures, even if it comes with sunny, comparatively clear days and bearably cool nights and mornings. The fact that I don't have a swimming pool and/or a beach nearby where I can spend the whole afternoon in submersion and possibly drinking fruit cocktails only makes it worse. The Patagonic summer I'm fleeing to in less than three weeks should be drier, but not necessarily less torrid.

Mosquito Coast

It's coming, finally, as we'd feared. Tropical weather, and now a tropical disease! An epidemic outbreak of dengue fever has infected 16,000+ people in Paraguay (that's more than 1,000 km closer to the Equator than here) and killed hundreds. The first cases started appearing in the northeastern provinces of Argentina and soon Paraguayans coming to Argentina and Argentinians returning from a visit to Paraguay brought it to the central areas. There are more than 126 confirmed cases in the country, half of those in Buenos Aires City and around. In Rosario we have (I think, today) seven suspected cases and one confirmed.

Dengue is a disease similar to a strong flu, which causes headaches, muscular and joint aches, nausea, and fever. It's transmitted by Aedes aegypti, a species of mosquito. A. aegypti is not commonly found on this latitude, but I believe at least three of the cases in Buenos Aires are autoctonous, i.e. were contracted by human-mosquito-human transmission there, and not brought from Paraguay. The confirmed case in Rosario was infected during vacations in Buzios, Brazil (there are thousands of cases in southern Brazil as well).

Dengue has no specific treatment: people simply have to rest and keep drinking fluids, while the fever and the pain are treated with paracetamol-related drugs (paracetamol is known as acetaminophen in the U.S.), since the disease can have a haemorrhagic variant and you can't use the usual non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (paracetamol is also much cheaper — but it can kill your liver). Patients must be isolated in order to prevent transmission, i.e. so that mosquitoes don't bite them and carry the disease elsewhere.

I haven't seen Aedes aegypti here, though I haven't been looking; they say it's noticeably different from the common local mosquitoes. There are a lot of those anyway. You have to consider that the Paraná River has a huge floodplain, full of shallow canals, marshes and other places with lots of vegetation and stagnant water, a perfect breeding ground. We've always had a lot of mosquitoes in the summer, but lately they're appearing in October and lasting until April or even May, and they're big and nasty.

Topping it off, the level of the Paraná is increasing, overflowing its banks. Rosario is not going to get flooded, but its beaches are already mostly gone. The river is forcing people in its islands to abandon them, and carrying aquatic plants that are left to rot in the shores. In Santa Fe City, 200 km north, 230 people have been evacuated, and some are worrying the population (unjustifiedly, according to the government) that there might be a flood like in 2003 (that one was not caused by the Paraná, but by the Salado River, which comes from the northwest of the country).

The mosquitoes are not going away. Pharmacies and supermarkets have noted that mosquito repellents have flown from the isles and the manufacturers are seemingly unable to cope with the demand. You can apply some cream or use an airborne repellent in your room at home, you can close off all openings with physical barriers, but you can't do anything while you're outside. Jogging along the coast the other day, my buddy and I observed that the moment we stopped to stretch, we were attacked by swarms of little bloodthirsty monsters. There are mosquitoes inside my office, and in the bus, and in the street while you're having a cup of coffee in a café.


The municipality has been spreading insecticide around, but it's not enough. Somebody in the radio today proposed we should breed dragonflies to eat the mosquitoes. Dragonflies, which are traditionally considered a sign that a rainstorm is about to come (at least that's what my parents passed down from my grandads), are repulsive when you see them up close, but they don't bite. I saw one flying inside the bus this morning as I went to work. I don't know if they actually feed on mosquitoes, but I know the weather tradition is grounded in reality, as it's been raining on and off for four of five days in a row.

So we have constant rain, mosquitoes and a tropical disease. What's next? Women wearing as little clothing as possible, pineapple drinks in the beach, a world-class carnival? You wish.

Happy New Year

I hope my loyal readers had a great New Year. Over here it was so hot that we went relatively light on food and focused on cold beer... which didn't stay cold for long. We ate outdoors (a round of sandwiches around 10 PM, main course starting 11 PM) but the air was absolutely still.

The first day of 2007 was even worse. Amidst the constant feed of non-news that fills TV from mid-December until March, great headlines warned us that the temperature was above 35 °C and the sensación térmica (lit. "thermic sensation", a kind of heat index, only it takes the wind into account as well) was almost 42 °C. With the sun hanging high and unmitigated by clouds, the streets were deserted. The media from Buenos Aires reported a catastrophic scenario of empty avenues and the usual massive exodus of porteños towards the Atlantic coast of Buenos Aires Province..., a nightmarish migration of millions of middle-aged men with beer bellies and fat suntanned women carrying along screaming little children and bored teenagers pouring into the very same places they visit and get ripped off at every year since the 1980s. (Who endures a 4-hour traffic jam on a hot road to stay in a hotel room and go to a casino?)

Not that rosarinos don't do the same, of course. The less favoured, however, turn to the public pools, the beach of La Florida, or the islands. I read the other day that Rosario has the largest amount of public pools in the country, where you just get a physical, pay a small fee (AR$5 tops), and stay as much as you want; plus there are more than a few clubs with such facilities. La Florida is a barrio that stretches along the river in the north of Rosario, east of Barrio Alberdi proper, and La Florida is also the name of the beach — which has two parts: a beach resort where you pay, and a free area. La Florida is lined with pubs and bars; at night they tend to get full, since boliches (discos, disco-bars) move to the coast. Finally there's the islands in front of Rosario, which have always been popular but have been greatly developed in the last few years. Boats leave at regular intervals from a few piers taking eager passengers equipped with summer gear.

I'm not a fan of going elsewhere for the day just to keep cool; you have to have equipment and you have to spend a significant time going to and back from the place, all the time sweating while you carry your backpack or whatever. I'm just patiently waiting to get away from Rosario for two weeks. Mendoza is not necessarily cooler (in fact it's hotter at times) but it's much less humid; you can get by just drinking lots of water and staying in the shadow.

I'm wondering whether I should stick to a less-than-daily posting rhythm in this blog. I've been having less visitors lately, probably because they're on vacation. I'll be away for two weeks anyway, and I don't think I'll be posting much (if anything) from Mendoza. I have interesting plans for after the summer, though. Just wait!