Patience is wearing thin, tension is rising, excitement is at an all-time high: when am I finally going to meet my magic carpet?
And now windguru, the most trusted forecast page around here, is telling me that there’s a blizzard to hit just when I’m scheduled to leave my alternative Patagonian residence for my first trip to its hangar.
Do I really have to give another probe of my persistence?
I saw the ominous graphic showing the threaded dark blue squares with numbers in the teens, printed bold, indicating precipitation in cm’s of snow two days after I hit the ‘buy’ button on travelocity to get my ticket.
Well, I still have almost two weeks to go and in my circles of friends I’m known for the dictum:”Don’t believe in a forecast for more than three days out!”, but with all my anxious anticipation I can’t help thinking:” ok, but what if the predictions turn out to be correct just this time?”
I’m nervous, and for a reason: last year a surprise snowstorm almost forced me to cancel a similar trip. I managed to get out with the first bus after having been snowed in for five days and made my flight with just 2 hours to spare.
In case you wondered: no, it’s not that easy to come up with different options to leave this place at the end of the world. Throw some snow into the mix and it becomes next to impossible.
Flying out of Buenos Aires, taking the popular, comfortable and in my experience very punctual long-distance over-night bus to get there, a serious snow accumulation will – in a worst case scenario – take a couple of days for snow removal along the first 200km.
Flying out of Santiago on the other hand, one has to cross one of two passes into Chile, not very high (about 4000ft) but exposed and bound to get the biggest accumulation. They are comparatively close, so snow removal might not take as long, but once regular schedules are broken they require time to relocate the buses for service as usual.
So what do you do when the forecast has about two days of “credibility”?
Fly to Buenos Aires, you say? Well, this might actually work, if you can book your trip three months ahead of time. In most cases I can’t….
Now I have one week to go and it looks a bit better – a couple more days with relaxation exercises…..