Calor Sofocante

There have been several days of what the BA newpapers are fond of calling "un calor sofocante." As with the rest of the world, temperature doesn't count anymore; it's the "sensacion termica," which reached 106 F on New Year's Day, the hottest New Year's in a decade. On one of the earlier days like that, we went to the long-standing Embassy steakhouse hangout, the Rio Alba. With each bite of chorizo steak there I sweated more despite the air conditioning. Then that night I jogged around nine, still with the temp almost surely 90 degrees. Dana Dee and I went out later for something to eat and when we stopped at Filippos near our house -- great ice cream and the irresistible pastiche outside its entrance of Carlos Gardel in his standard stud of tango pose with a Filippo cone in his hand -- the rain finally began. It lasted all night -- as it has on two other occasions since we've been here -- and, after spectacular lightning and sleep-shaking thunder, finally ended when we got up around 10. These storms at night are a wonderful part of Buenos Aires and on that particular Sunday morning only after noon did Palermo begin to stir. The NYT Travel feature section quarterly said "Porteños would only venture to this original part of the city to visit the old folks or when the Peugeot needed fixing." Or, as our experience with our Peugeot in the 80's was, when something was wrong that the garage could fix while also nicking something else that would assure I'd be bringing it back in another couple weeks for the same cycle to begin again.