While back home i may be a little bit of a magnet for (minor) incidents, i've realised that i had been unwittingly dodging a couple of far more serious incidents during my most recent trip. It was only after i had safely left the city of Cordoba that i learnt (through picking up on whatever i could from the Spanish-language Argentinian TV report that i happened to catch a brief glimpse of) that there was a police strike there, and in fact only nearing the end of the trip, close to two weeks after having left Cordoba, that i realised that it had turned rather violent, not only in Cordoba itself but in many other parts of the country as well, while i remained blissfully unaware of what was going on. In fact, the strike and riots had begun on the afternoon/evening of Dec 3, while i caught a bus out of the city that same night.
I suppose that you could consider this a benefit of travelling in a country where the lingua franca is by and large alien to you. And of course having to do stuff like arranging transport and accommodation during the precious time that i was able to get online rather than browsing news websites played a role too.
The second incident i just missed were the power cuts in Buenos Aires that have since escalated into protests. The reports state that the power cuts had started affecting residents two weeks ago, which is precisely when i flew out of Buenos Aires. In fact, there was a minor power outage that lasted less than a minute while i was at the airport awaiting to board my plane, though judging by the lack of any hit of surprise on the faces of the airport staff, perhaps that was merely routine. Whatever the case, my timing for both has been spot on, though of course i still feel sad to see such incidents happening in Argentina, which to me really is a country that potentially has so much going for it. NE lesson in the making, this is..
I suppose that you could consider this a benefit of travelling in a country where the lingua franca is by and large alien to you. And of course having to do stuff like arranging transport and accommodation during the precious time that i was able to get online rather than browsing news websites played a role too.
The second incident i just missed were the power cuts in Buenos Aires that have since escalated into protests. The reports state that the power cuts had started affecting residents two weeks ago, which is precisely when i flew out of Buenos Aires. In fact, there was a minor power outage that lasted less than a minute while i was at the airport awaiting to board my plane, though judging by the lack of any hit of surprise on the faces of the airport staff, perhaps that was merely routine. Whatever the case, my timing for both has been spot on, though of course i still feel sad to see such incidents happening in Argentina, which to me really is a country that potentially has so much going for it. NE lesson in the making, this is..
No comments:
Post a Comment