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Published: April 3rd 2006
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Zzzzzzzz...
Sleepy time down south in ol' Concepción WAKEY WAKEY! Yes, we are now in Paraguay, where the temperature rarely dips below 35 deg. C (95 deg.F), and this tends to induce a certain torpor. And today being Sunday, all the shops and restaurants are closed, and the streets of the capital are deserted.
Paraguay is a country I´ve wanted to visit ever since Adam went there in about 1970 when it was still a military dictactorship, and reported seeing corrupt generals wearing mirror shades and white uniforms with self-awarded medals, being driven around in open-topped cars.
And while the USA is busy turning itself into a one-party state, it could take some lessons from Paraguay: the Colorado party has been in power here since 1949. That should be scary, but you don´t get any real sense of menace despite the bored gun-totin' goons lounging around in the shade drinking their maté. It´s more the sensation of a country that's standing still while all around it other south American states are finally electing leaders with a proper social programme.
There's a long history here of dictators and generals of quite astonishing incompetence and brutality. Paraguay is a country which, like Bolivia, was careless enough to lose
both its coastline and half its male population by taking on three countries at once in a suicidal war (if you must know, the War of the Triple Alliance - 1865-70). A country which allowed its last dictator to rule for 35 years until he finally croaked in 1989. A country so mired in corruption that they recently chose a well-known embezzler as their caretaker President. And also, a country that no one ever visits.
Plus, after several weeks in Argentina, a beautiful, sophisticated and friendly country, we found ourselves unexpectedly pining for The Third World Experience. That´s the queasy excitement you feel from constantly looking over your shoulder to check whether you´re being followed, pestered, attacked, kidnapped, robbed, ripped off, poisoned, or sent plunging into a crevasse in a clapped-out bus.
The first thing you notice about Paraguay is that its three biggest cities are Asunción, Concepción and Encarnación (curiously absent from the sequence are Penetración and Ejaculación, but Ì suppose that's just another of the Catholic Mysteries) The second thing is that Asunción is even more scuzzy than Peru or Bolivia. That is, if you measure scuzz by the number of beggars, lepers and 14-year-old mothers,
Anyone seen any ants?
These lesser anteaters are apparently not seen very often, so we were lucky to spot this one at close quarters the tonnage of litter per hectare, the hectarage of graffiti, the number of stray dogs and already-falling-down half-constructed buildings, the absence of street lighting, the numbers of large holes in the pavement and the frequency of car alarms going off. Despite all that, the politicians have somehow managed to find the money for a huge new parliament building of polished chrome and marble. Fittingly, right opposite is a collection of stinking hovels.
However, Concepción was quite possibly our biggest find of the trip so far: it's a delightful place a little smaller than Teddington, with lots of old(ish) buildings and plenty of character. The sleepy old port has not been added to in any way since it was built in the 1920s. Horse-drawn carts clop through every few minutes. The locals all buzz around on scooters and low-powered motorcycles. In the afternoon the town is dusty and deserted, but at night it turns into a cruisìn' paradise - whole families putter around on a single scooter. We even saw three boys ride past on a three-seater bicycle complete with speakers belting out Status Quo.
And there are absolutely no other tourists, which probably explains why we were stared
More horseplay
We got our feet wet on this ride at everywhere we went...
After leaving Buenos Aires we headed north to see the remains of the Jesuit missions near Posadas, then the astonishing Iguazu Falls, and continued into Brazil, where we did a trip into the Pantanal wetlands. That's when we turned south into Paraguay.
The Pantanal (see horse-riding and caiman pix) turned out to be completely stuffed with wildlife. We even saw a rare lesser anteater up a tree in a palm forest. Annoyingly, our friends Adrian and Carmen capped this soon afterwards by spotting a giant anteater, which Adrian pursued across a field with his camera. We had to content ourselves with a stuffed one in a park visitor centre in Paraguay. It was about six feet long, nose to tail, and has to be the most extraordinary beast in creation. Its immensely long head, containing an immensely long sticky tongue, makes perfect sense for one whose main diet is termites, as do the powerful termite-mound-bustin´claws. But whose idea was the vast bushy tail, unless it´s for covering its tracks from pursuing tourists with cameras? More ludicrous still is the outsize baggy grey sweater it seems to be wearing, complete with gratuitous black go-faster
Black caimen
They told me this was perfectly safe stripe.
Was that a Christmas present from Auntie Anteater? I mean, don't these guys ever watch What Not To Wear?
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Shawn Revels
non-member comment
Hello There
Hmm, that flutterby looks similar to some of the ones in Manu, as do the caimans! I love the graffiti. Can't wait to hear from you guys again! ~*Shawn*~