So today we had inundaciones around the city. It was raining buckets this morning, for several hours. Way, way more rain than we get in New York except maybe once a decade. This is a pretty regular occurrence here, the semi-tropical downpour that floods the streets.
There was a big lake in the street outside my window, though only two or three inches deep. But a few blocks away, it looked like this:
I saw an image like this on the TV news at around noon, and got all excited. Oooh, baby, here I am, so close to trouble! (Right -- in my comfy apt on the 3rd floor, with the cable TV on, etc.) Then shortly after the electricity went out. Trouble indeed! But no, the rain stopped shortly thereafter, and I just laid in bed and read a book for an hour or so. I did have to take a cold shower before heading out, though -- oh, how I suffer!
I had spanish class downtown, and I wasn't sure if the subte (subway) was running, but amazingly it was. Delays, of course, delays in jam-packed cars full of hot damp people. (No AC in the trains here, not for 30 cents a ride.) But amazingly, it was running, right under the street where this picture was taken a couple hours earlier.
I swear, it amazes me that places like Buenos Aires and Mexico City, and for that matter New York, manage to run as smoothly as they do, with all the things that can go wrong. God bless those hard-working civil servants and whoever else keeps the cities running.
This evening the local TV news (which I watch for spanish practice!) was full of hand-wringing about the flooding in Buenos Aires and how the government has not planned well enough and has not done the public works that it should etc. etc. etc. But honestly, I was shocked that the city cleaned up as fast as it did. The first thing I said to my spanish teacher was, hey, you guys have some good alcantarillas (sewers) here. She wasn't buying it.
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