dia de la primavera

As I write this evening, I am looking out my 5th floor window across a small park. It is almost dark, and there are about three dozen swallows performing aerobatics at my eye level, chasing insects in the twilight. One of them perched on my windowsill briefly a few minutes ago before sailing off again.

Though the buds have been rising and the pigeons cooing for a couple of weeks, today is the first official day of spring in Buenos Aires. Despite the comparatively mild winter, los porteños greet the return of the sun with the riotous joy you might expect from the Inuit as the spring dawn feebly peeps above the ice.

The equinox is filled with local and inexplicable ritual. For example, in the office yesterday afternoon, flowers appeared on all our desks, great and small alike, from "the management". I thought for one terrible moment it was Secretary's Day and I had been misclassified.

It was the first evening since I arrived here in June when it was warm enough to sit outside in the evening. As we enjoyed a post-work beverage at the Spell Cafe, the sights and sounds of spring were all around us.

It seems that spring must be greeted with much shouting and tooting of car horns. The avenue was jammed with cars, however it all seemed in good humour. A party of girls strolled past the cafe carrying giant red hearts - who knows why.

I bid my colleagues goodbye about 20:00 and strolled home to an early night. My dreams were filled with shouts and car horns.

I woke this morning to a perfect, sunny day, after a week of clouds and rain. As I walked through the park taking photos, the debris of the night before demonstrated what a good time was had by all. As the day warmed up, every available surface was populated by recumbent bodies.

I will come back tomorrow to see if they are sunseekers, or leftovers from the night before.
I am running a book on these two - they are probably:

1. Sleeping off last night's wedding
2. Chauffeurs on their lunch break
3. Off-duty bouncers catching a kip on their way home.

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