Swine Flu and Snow
August 3, 2009
Dearest Readers,
Unless you have been living in a vacum for the past couple months you have heard of the flu pandemic (n1h1) that is affecting our little rock called Earth. Well Argentina has been no exception. After the initial outbreak, they finally decided to close the schools and other such places where people tend to collect. This resulted in an extra long winter vacation for me.
My plans were to go to the mountains in Cordoba for a climbing course. Well, I went but the weather had other plans for us. After the first day of scorching heat, spent scramble up into the mountains to our camp site, it quickly took a turn for the bad…..and worst. The clouds moved in, and a that altitude when the clouds move in you are within them. The rock was soaked, which meant no climbing. We managed to get about half a day of climbing in, but then clouds brought mist and light rain which kept us in our tents for another day.
Finally on the last day, as it looked as though things were clearing up, the clouds moved in yet again and there was little to be done. We returned to camp, only to have it start snowing as we packed up. 5 inches fell in about 2 hours and i found myself scrambleing down extreamely slippery rocks as nthe snow continued to fall. When we at last had the car in sight it all decided to stop and clear up.
So that was my failed trip to Cordoba, after 9 long hours in the car we arrived at home to find out that it had snowed all over the country (very rare). Some places got as much as 70 cm in one night. One must understand that these places are no acustomed to snow and i caused hell on the highways.
Now i am back at school……more or less. The extra 3 weeks of vacation set everything back and no one knows what is really going on. hopefully after an administrative meeting tonight they can get things back on track and it will be buisness as usual before the end of the week. I personally doubt that (this IS argentina you know).
sincerely,
J. Benjamin
