COMODORO RIVADAVIA.- The microcenter of this city is eight blocks long by four wide, from the coastal road to Spain Street and from the base of Chenque hill to route 3. It is the area where banks, hotels, restaurants are concentrated and confectioneries; It is where the two cinemas are, the theater, most of the bars and clubs and the Cathedral. This week was transformed: the arrival of American, British and Russian military to help in the search and eventual rescue of the submarine ARA San Juan did not go unnoticed.
Although the foreign military spent most of the time in the port, finalizing the preparations for the departure of the Skandi Patagonia on Tuesday, the ARA Puerto Argentino on Friday, and the Sophie Siem, some were in the center of the city in the morning and in the evening. Those who work in cafés in the neuralgic zone of Comodoro Rivadavia faced, at the beginning of the day, orders made in English or directly to orders made with signs. The same happened to those who serve in restaurants at night.
Suddenly, before the inhabitants of the center of Comodoro Rivadavia could get used to the presence of men dressed in camouflaged clothing in such a small area, it became habitual to see them in tanda from one side to the other. The Cafeteria Balcarce de Rivadavia y Moreno, the restaurant Cayo Coco, on the corner of Rivadavia and Güemes, and the restaurant Puerto Cangrejo, on the Costanera, had US sailors as customers for the first time. Something similar happened with the Austral, Comodoro and Lucania Palazzo Hotel hotels, which received reservations for dozens of rooms and sold out their capacity.
Yesterday, when it spread through social networks that the Sophie Siem would leave at 18, dozens of families approached the port and wanted to enter, but they ran into Prefectura Naval, who strictly controlled access. They landed on the waterfront, where hundreds of people from Comodore set their sights on firing the ship. With Argentine flags and flowers, they stood guard for hours. It was an atypical postcard.
From architect to interpreter in less than ten minutes
Fernando Mercado is an architect and on Sunday night he was planning his week when he received a call from Favio Cambareri, owner of the Port Authority of Comodoro Rivadavia. Cambareri knew that the young man had made the secondary school in an American school and that his English is fluent. From that moment, Mercado became the interpreter of the port. For hours and hours he helped coordinate the Argentine, American and British military, from the purchase of supplies to the logistics of assembling the hydraulic arm placed on the ship Sophie Siem.
