Heavy Rain

The other night it rained so hard that the streets flooded. I mean seriously flooded. Cars were floating down the street and parts of the city lost electricity until the next morning. From my 10th story apartment I watched a little bit of the storm, but really didn’t grasp the magnitude of it until later on.

Every time it rains hard in Buenos Aires, Palermo floods. It’s a combination of low streets and not very good drainage, plus all of the garbage that collects by the gutters. This means that once a rain storm comes through, the streets instantly become ponds, which turn into lakes, which flow into rivers. But again, up on the 10th floor I was lucky and dry, having gotten home before the storm, even getting a short run in first.

There are a lot of people that sleep out on the street in this city though. I wonder what they did during that storm. If they live in Palermo they probably had no where to go that night. As it was, subway service was disrupted on several of the lines up through last night, much to my surprise when I got out of work and had to struggle to first find a kiosk to give me change, then find a bus and get home.

Ever since the weekend Buenos Aires has cooled down a lot, almost so that it feels like autumn, but it’s too early for that yet. This is just a cold front, and I’m sure that in the next few days it will heat up again. In the meantime, it’s a nice change of pace to not sweat on the walk to work, and last night it was even chilly. My two visitors will be leaving shortly—one leaves tonight and the other tomorrow. But I won’t be alone for long, because in mid-March I have more guests coming from Ecuador for a week.

Having the guests come is nice and fun, though it does get tiring going to the same spots. Yet at the end of their stay, you realize that you enjoy the company and will have a void without them there. Even if it means going to the same tourist spots over and over again.