Snow in Argentina

That afternoon when I arrived in Bariloche, eager to see snow for the first time in my life, the only thing I got was a thick cold rain. Ok, I came from the arid Brazilian backlands, but I’d seen rain two or three times. I hadn’t done that 20-hour bus trip from Buenos Aires just to see another of those.

So I asked for information to a lady who surely wasn’t happy to be there, and she told me that I should take a bus or a cab to a small ski village on the base of a mountain called Cerro Catedral. The bus stop was outside the station. I was carrying two bags with clothes, notebooks, pens, pills, cookies, half a mozzarella, one useless Borges tome and no umbrella.

I walked through the mass of falling water, slowly, trying not to slip in the mud, and got to the crowded bus stop. Everyone was upset. A chubby indian with a Boca Juniors hood stared at me. He wasn’t happy either, and I just assumed it was the rain. After what seemed to be 25 minutes, I agreed to pay a small fortune to a cab driver.

He was weirdly anxious, but it didn’t matter. At every curve I expected to find white snowflakes. It was my last week in Argentina, and I couldn’t miss the chance. There in the capital, I’d been told that Bariloche was the closest place I could find snow. Since it wasn’t, I had to hide my own anxiety from the driver.

But there was no snow in the village either. A dense fog blurred everything, and the rain was thicker and colder than in Bariloche. The driver just grabbed his money and flew in a hurry, leaving me there, soaked wet, looking for a place to stay.

All the buildings around were Swiss chalets. I knocked at the doors of two hostels and got no answer. The only cop at the police station simply couldn’t understand why I was there. Actually, he seemed deeply annoyed with my presence.

That was when I finally stopped worrying about snow. Fog. Empty streets. Silence. Unwilling cops. I’d seen many versions of this movie and they all ended up in graphic violence.

Suddenly, I heard some noise from a closed hostel on a hill. After ringing the bell with persistence, a really mad man made it very clear to me that I was making him miss the first game of Argentina in the World Cup.

I, the Brazilian soccer fan, had completely forgotten about it!

Only after the game I found a cozy cottage to sleep. On the next day, the sun appeared and I could finally see the snow in the top of a mountain, which I decided to climb.

But that, my friends, is another story.