Igloo

Bariloche had an accident that resulted in an interesting last week. An excavator accidentally severed the city’s main gas line. Being that all cooking appliances, furnaces, and hot water heaters run on gas here, Bariloche got cold real quick. All of the schools shut down for lack of heat, warm food was hard to come by, showers were attempted by only the desperate, and getting clothes washed and dried simply didn’t work. I failed to see the point in closing the schools because the kids’ houses were equally absent of warmth, so I continued my classes with my instructor. Grilling or heating the house with the living room fireplaces would have been an option, but the day the gas line went out the weather turned to Oregonian rain and any piece of dry wood in existence was soaked. We were able to grab one of the last bags of coal from the store, but that lasted about four hours.

I passed the cold evening hours under blankets wearing enough layers to make a croissant jealous. With the cat sleeping at my feet, we watching TED Talks and MASH re-runs until sleeping through to morning seemed possible.

From what I could understand, the gas couldn’t just be turned back on after they had the pipe fixed. They had to go to each house along its path and turn it on again. Being a few kilometers from town we still didn’t have gas this morning when I left for Mendoza. I’m in Buenos Aires right now waiting for a flight to Mendoza, happy to be back in the 70 degree heat, but definitely missing Bariloche already. 

Tomorrow I will explore Mendoza.