agustina prigoshin

So far, I’ve been on four airplanes during this trip and although I always feel like cattle when going through Customs and airport security, this trip made me feel like I was an infected bovine. Swine Flu is all the rage nowadays and in Argentina, we also have the infamous Dengue Fever.

First of all, when I arrived in Buenos Aires, my father wasn’t waiting for me when I got off the plane and after an hour of waiting around, I was told that he might be at the regular international terminal. So I asked, “Well, where am I then?” The man told me that because I was flying in from the states and ran the risk of carrying Swine Flu, we were redirected to another terminal. That’s when I noticed all the airport personnel walking around with face masks.

When we jumped on another plane and landed in Trelew, we encountered another group of airport staff fully geared to protect themselves from any disease I may have packed in my carry-on.

It was a similar situation when we landed in Ushuaia. We were constanly being watched by masked airport hawks as we went through our usual post-flight routine. Suddenly, I felt a sniffle and a sneeze was soon to follow. I imagined the scenario: I sneeze and get tackled to the ground by men in hazmat suits, thrown into a plastic bubble and get rolled away. I was tempted to sneeze and see what would happen, but decided to not risk ruining my vacation and just held it down.

The greatest experience came when I landed in El Calafate this afternoon. We had to fill out paperwork that explained where he had been in the last 10 days and if we felt “any of the following symptoms.” It listed all the typical flu-like symptoms with the exception of one that was interesting. It listed “decay.” Maybe I haven’t been sick enough, but someone please tell me what “decay” feels like. How does one classify and diagnose “decay” as a symptom??

I picked up my suitcase and proudly toted my filled out form which proved that I was perfectly healthy to Customs. A woman asked for my self-diagnosed paper and asked me to look at a camera. There, on the screen next to the camera, was me. I was red with areas of yellow and some orange and in the middle of my face where my nose is supposed to be, I was blue. I guess they didn’t believe my paper that said I was healthy, they just had to see my body temperature, too!

All in all, it was an experience. If you can keep yourself from getting frustrated, airports can really be a funny place to watch people and see how silly some procedures seem to be.