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| Last few days in Palermo, and last opportunity to listen to Folkloric music and eat stuffed eggplant at Los Cardones. As usual a long lineup of performers, which NEVER start before 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. |
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| Definitely Christmas time, with reindeer decorating the walls of the Pena, and Christmas lights blink on and off - as usual, the place is packed |
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| Fans put up a banner of Yuchan, a band that performs tonight as the main attraction. Kids stay up until all hours of the night - one just hopes, their ear drums are not totally ruined by the time they are of school age. |
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| This little guy with his green toy guitar was mesmerized by the bands, and tried with all his might to join all of them on stage (trying varying approach routes, including crawling under chairs and tables to get there). |
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| While this young senorita was watching the performance of the kid guitarist with some scepticism |
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| A regular singer on Los Cardones stage... |
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| I sometimes have the impression that Argentinos are born with a guitar in hand, and practice playing it when still in the womb |
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| Another regular band "Los Troperos Saltenos' singing Zambas and Chacareras |
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| Fiddling is part of folk music, and this young man would not have been out of place at a Cape Breton Fiddling Festival |
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| Adoring Fans lined up beside the stage |
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| Tata, whose real name escapes me, but he brought the house down, apparently he is quite well known... |
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| Early Morning blues... |
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| In the meantime, someone found out, what caused the power outage.... On a serious note, some barrios are without power and water since last Monday. In suffocating heat that situation has become a public disgrace. Residents suffer, hospitals work by candle light, food is thrown out, people wash themselves with mineral water. No one mentions toilets. Transit is almost non existent, as vehicles remain stationary for ever at crossings without traffic lights nor traffic cops. Ambulances, firetrucks, police cars - Good Luck. Riders of motor bikes and regular bikes seem to be at the most advantage. Demonstrations don't help matters, as they block even more streets. The Government has announced that is is monitoring Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter for any posts, that may suggest uprisings or riots....hmmmm. Even the Grand Bus Terminal Retiro was hit by a 12 hour outage. With half of Buenos Aires heading out of town - by bus - makes things uncomfortable there. 3300 buses will leave this weekend heading for every imaginable destination in South America. Of course, during the outage ticketing systems were out of commission, ergo no tickets could be sold, buses had to leave anyway, without all their passengers aboard. Only the terminal pharmacy was open for business - nothing else opened up. Public toilets - let's not even go there... Several districts of Buenos Aires are still seriously affected by lengthy power outages, except of course Puerto Madero, which is the exclusive part of town - they are lit up for the Fiestas. Official reasons for the power outage are mutating from 'growth in the economy', 'prolonged heatwave' and now to 'fault of the power distribution companies'. One barrio kidnapped a power truck, and made the crew work on power cables, which were burnt too a crisp, due to overload and probably due to being years past the 'best before date'. Today's top temperature should reach a 'fresh' 31 degrees, after tomorrow and over Christmas, it will warm up a bit towards 37 degrees - and a possibility of hitting 40. Relief is predicted for Thursday, Boxing Day, when I leave Buenos Aires. One heads for short stints at a Milonga, preferably air conditioned, for a couple of Tangos - danced slowly and without the typical abrazo cerrado - to keep body temperatures down, and clothes dry. Getting there is half the fun: suddenly subways become the preferred mode, albeit non air conditioned and full of workers and Christmas shoppers, at least one does not have to deal with surface traffic, albeit the heat down there is something else. |
