January in Bs As

Everyone has been warning us for months about Buenos Aires in the summertime.

Supposedly, there's a mass exodus out of Buenos Aires in January toward the Atlantic coast and the beaches of Mar del Plata, or the coast of the Rio de la Plata north of the city. Unlike in Montreal where summer is the sweet reward for having survived the long cold winter, here it never gets THAT cold, so the summers are just hot. Really hot. And humid.

"It's SO dead in Bs As in the summer!" "It's so boring there's no one around and nothing happening!" "It's so hot, if you don't have air conditioning, you're going to suffer!" "The city's overrun with foreign tourists!" "You simply HAVE to leave the city in the summer!"

The warnings started as soon as I arrived. And now that the holidays are over and summer's really started, we're getting to see how much there is in all these ominous predictions.

But, I mean, not every single person in the city can pick up and go to the beach for a full month, can they? Some can't afford it, some are obliged to stay because of their jobs, and some just don't like laying on the beach with 200,000 other people and so will take their vacation later. And so those of us that are still around will do our best, I guess, to entertain ourselves.

A friend told me that the nightlife's really great in January because it's so hot no one emerges from their air conditioned caves until nightfall, when they let out all the day's energy on the dancefloor. Another friend told me that the city is void of kids in the summer so you can walk around in peace.

And so what's it REALLY like in Bs As in the summer?

Well, it was 43C on Monday. And almost that high for several days previous and since. Like, I had no concept of what 43 degrees was really like. 43 degrees in the middle of a huge, sprawling city, where garbage doesn't get collected the way it really should and where there's a complete lack of public swimming pools. 43C on New Year's day when all the malls, supermarkets and cinemas, those bastions of over-airconditioning, are all closed. But the last couple of days it's actually gone below 20C. And whenever the slightest complaint starts to form on my lips regarding the heat, I say to myself, " I could be in a sub-zero blizzard waiting for the 80 on Parc Ave. "

And there are fewer people on the streets. There are fewer big events advertised in the papers and on telephone polls. Some stores are closed up for a couple of weeks. And there are notiaceably more North American tourists escaping the northern winter. The city has slightly less of that buzzy, frenetic energy so omnipresent the rest of the year.

But it's by no means lost it all.