What Woke Me Up on Sunday

And why I spent the rest of the day looking up the weather in Argentina.

Lau here.

Yesterday I was woken from my Sunday slumber by this (the bottom half is in English, so you can read it for yourself).

Yellow just means nothing has been confirmed in the airspace, but something might be, so find somewhere safe and sit tight. The next level, Red, means it's actually up there, and you're meant to get to a shelter (underground parking, for example).

We’ve been getting more and more of these lately. Sometimes it’s a Russian drone. Sometimes it’s a Ukrainian one. And sometimes it’s a flock of smuggling balloons from Belarus, which have done a fine job of grounding flights at our airports.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. We’re back in the part of Europe historian Timothy Snyder called the Bloodlands.

Good thing it was the weekend and we were all at home. The last one caught the kids at school. My two spent it in the shelter with their classmates, and between the novelty of that and the teachers looking a little lost themselves, they came home rattled.

Now, I’m not complaining. Being here has real advantages. The whole country holds about as many people as the city of Chicago, spread over an area roughly the size of West Virginia, so it never feels crowded. The cities are clean, everything works, and, not least, the kids’ grandparents live a few miles down the road, which was the single biggest reason we came back after almost two decades of vagabonding around the world.

So with everything going on, both here and around the world, some days inevitably feel a bit like a certain internet meme, drone alerts or not (a sentiment I’m sure you, dear reader, can identify with).

I don’t fancy the chances of the guy in the middle. But he does look like a man with a great deal of practice, which is about as much as any of us can reasonably aim for.

Anyway. Later that day we sat down to carry on with an Argentine series we’ve been watching, which is set in Bariloche. San Carlos de Bariloche, to give it its full name. A lake town in Argentine Patagonia, sitting on the shore of a glacial lake about the size of Lake Geneva, with the Andes behind it. The Argentines call it their Switzerland and they’re not far wrong.

And I spent most of the episode not following the plot. Looking at all that water and rock, my mind wandered off to plan B.

Look, living in the Bloodlands you’d be a fool not to have some sort of plan B, and we have done something about it. We’re permanent residents of Paraguay, the kids hold Paraguayan citizenship by birth, and there are a few other arrangements in place to keep the eggs out of one basket.

But Paraguay has its drawbacks, and for me the biggest one is the weather. Asunción in January averages 92 Fahrenheit (33 Celsius) with the humidity to match, and twenty-five days out of thirty-one qualify as muggy or worse. You could cook lunch on your windshield. So I’ve never really thought of it as the kind of plan B you pack up and move to for good.

Right before I put my head down I looked up the annual temperatures in Bariloche. Summers top out around 70 Fahrenheit (21 Celsius). Winters sit in the low forties by day (about 6 Celsius) and go to freezing at night, with proper snow, and it’s dry, because the Andes wring the rain out before it gets there. Which is, more or less, exactly my climate. My wife, a self-described creature of heat, will take considerably more persuading.

Either way, I reckon I can at least get her there for a look. As it happens, we’re going back to Asunción next year, as we tend to every couple of years, and Argentina is close enough to make a detour sensible.

Coincidentally, Argentine friends of ours emailed recently about Villa La Angostura, an hour or so up the road from Bariloche, and had nothing but good things to say. So that’s on the list now too.

Source: Wikivoyage

Speaking of Argentine friends. If you read only one thing from last week, make it Joel Bowman’s essay (linked below along with the other pieces from last week). Joel writes Notes from the End of the World out of Buenos Aires, where he lives with his family. His piece was the first guest essay to appear in these pages.

I’d like to know what you made of it. If you enjoyed it, say so and I’ll get Joel back. And if you’d like to see more guest essays generally, tell me that too.

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From the Comments

One of the things I’ve come to appreciate most about writing here is the conversation that happens in the comments. Here are seven that stood out last week, for different reasons. Each one links back to the piece it appeared on, so you can click through if you’re interested in the context.

Thanks again to everyone who left a comment last week. I read all of them, even the ones I don’t get a chance to reply to individually. Over the coming days, I’ll try to catch up on the questions and the longer threads.

Regards,

Lau Vegys

P.S. If you joined as a paid member last week, welcome aboard. A few links to help you find your way around:

• The first recommendation: a uranium play, with the full thesis, buy-up-to price, and tranche levels.

• The second recommendation: a silver pick, same treatment. The whole thesis, and exactly what to do about it.

• The third recommendation: a U.S. gold developer trading at a fraction of what its ounces are worth.

• The live portfolio: the scorecard of every open position and where each one stands.

• The first Special Report: a deep dive into uranium and the opportunity behind it.