A hot Christmas at the beach in Pinamar. Not bad.
Christmas is not quite right in Argentina. It’s hot and it’s sweaty.
I’m used to cold Christmases and my wife to even colder Christmases. Los Angeles, my hometown, gets cold and the ocean even more so. The surf gets big and after two hours in the ocean you come out numb and you can’t turn the keys in the lock of the car door. My wife’s England can get snowy. It’s snowy there now, very much so.
Here we are playing Bob Marley and planning to hit the beach. We’ve got to escape the city first and beat the mass exodus to the coast. This afternoon it’s in the car and bolt (well, at first, it will be inch through the city traffic) and then bolt carefully down the highways running through the flat farmlands and to our house on the coast, our pine tree paradise in a forest a few blocks from the beach. It’s just that much removed from the summer throngs that we can only hear the roar of the quad bikes in the distance. The pine trees may creak in the heat but the beach breeze keeps us cooler than in the city.
A hot Christmas is just not right. But rolling down the grassy hill in our garden with my three children and swimming in the ocean and surfing in just board shorts in the warmish water. Well, it’s just fine with me.
