Recently I have been discussing various current events in Argentina. There has been the farm strike, the persistent smoke from extensive prairie fires, plus other tidbits. These two themes are still quite present with a new rural strike beginning yesterday. We’ll see if the meat disappears from the neighborhood markets again. Meanwhile, the fires from the farms way to the north of Buenos Aires are still affecting the city. Yesterday morning the smell was strong, with my eyes burning, and a heavy smog color in the air.

However, I wasn’t entirely sure if that color in the sky was from the fires in the north or from the eruption of a volcano in Patagonia. This is a major geological event. El Bolsón, a town in the south that I love in the heart of the Patagonian Andes, has been covered in ashes. Over Buenos Aires, 2000 kilometers to the northeast of the volcano, there is a big cloud of ash at 3500 meters altitude. In the city there is a hazy feel in the sky, but not too much else; but this cloud is strong enough that airline flights to the US and other places have been suspended.

Here in Argentina, airline travel is nowhere near as important as in the US and Europe. The pending meat shortage is given much more importance in the newspapers. Still, what was really talked about most yesterday was the early elimination from the Liberty Cup playoffs of the second most popular soccer team in Argentina, River Plate.

Me, we’ll I am whining about the high inflation here with three-peso empanadas, and also the paving over of the distinctive tiled sidewalks here with concrete. The latter will be the subject of my next installment.