This week has been pretty uneventful, so I looked through my old photos for something to spark a topic. Here’s one. The photo above was taken flying over the Andes in South America a few years ago. There was a couple years when I worked for Intel Security — and then McAfee — where a major software development hub of hours was in Cordoba, Argentina. I flew down there a few times to meet and work with my peers there, and it was always a great experience.
South America is bigger than you think. For some reason that my mind can’t wrap around, it’s not obvious when you look at a map how huge continents like South America and Africa are (Africa is still on my list!). I’d fly from Portland to LA, then fly to either Santiago, Chile, Buenos Aires, Argentina, or Lima, Peru, then on to Cordoba. The flight from LA to these stops was about the same flight time as from Portland to Europe. And the dissonance of leaving on a cold January day and 13 hours later it’s 90F is jarring.
When flying over this amazing mountain range of course the movie Alive came to mind. The 1993 movie about the Uruguayan rugby team crashing in the middle of snow-where and, well, watch the movie. “Mr. Donner! Party of 45!” Yeah. I made it, though, and probably had a pretty uninteresting snack of some Chilean cookies or something.
Columbia Gorge Dispatch 