Paraguay

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This entry should be a little shorter, luckily for Guy, as we were only in Paraguay for 4 days. I missed out chunks of Brazil but it is so difficult trying to tell you about absolutely everything so I had to cut out bits. Unfortunately I missed out an important part of the Rio story which Hal and Dom were not best pleased about.

You have to understand that when travelling after football, women, music and drugs bowel movement is probably the most talked about subject. I was lucky enough to get the shits half way through the favela tour. I was just walking merrily down the favela and soon realised...I had to run to the tour guide explain my embarassing situation and he got me to the nearest toilet, in the favela. Worst of all the toilet was in a nursery. Fair enough it was a banging toilet but using a kids toilet is pretty damn hard.

Moving on. Paraguay. The country that everyone forgot. Famous for dictatorships, jesuits and losing wars. It was definitely a unique country, but you can see why it doesn´t attract many travellers. With most people only in South America for 2 - 4 months Asuncion isn´t on the priority list of many. I have still yet to meet anyone who has been there, even those who have been travelling for over a year in South America. One guy I met had been to every country in South America....except Paraguay.

We were lucky as we had a British tour guide the entire time. Although he was fat and had flatulance problems he was still very informative. On the first day we went through Asuncion city centre (centre being used loosely). I think Asuncion can claim to be one of the only cities in the world who have their presidential palace next to a slum. The presidential palace is a fantastic building very much in South American style (shit copies of better buildings in Europe). It is a gem in an otherwise shithole. Asuncion seems to have these brilliant buildings dotted around the capital but they are ruined by the rest of the city (very similar to Rio). Our tour ended at Lima Bar where we got to try Paraguays favourite dish, Sopa Paraguaya. It was this kind of cakey, omlette, type thing which was quite nice, especially with ketchup (despite the outrage it caused with our tour guide).

We then got back to drink Paraguays favourite, (and I mean favourite in the strongest sense) terere. This is basically just cold Yerba Mate, but it is the nicest damn thing when you are strolling around in 40 degree heat. It has its funny customs, you cannot eat when drinking terere, if you say thank you it means you have finished and you always pass the guampa (cup to us Brits) back to the server. Paraguayans love the stuff, even on our 15 hour coach out of Paraguay one of our bus operators made this crazy contrapation so me Hal and Dom could have some terere, he knew how important it was for a long journey.

The next day...(I think) we went to Cerro Lambere. Its a big hill on the edge of Asuncion and lets you see over the whole of the cities skyline. At the top we sipped on our terere while Hal did some disgraceful things to Paraguays guarani liberator before flirting with a man. For some bizarre reason at the top of Cerro Lambere there was a tv crew possibly filming a music video with a cross dresser and two women. Quite surreal, but then again so is Paraguay.

Our last day the tour guide took us to Asuncion market. Paraguays position in South America is known as the supermarket of South America, they have dirt cheap goods and we took advantage of this. It is a fake empire (pun intended). Dom got his fake Ray Bans, I have my fake football shirt, we also bought some shit speakers that broke in three days. Asuncion had everything you need, you could probably buy an aeroplane if you looked hard enough.

My general conclusion of Paraguay is that it would have been shit if we didn´t have our trusty tour guide and Paraguayan company, so when I meet people and they ask me about it I say yer it was banging but would probably be a bit brass if you were just travelling and not doing something. Also Paraguay was notably corrupt and poorer than Brazil and Argentina. Like Argentina Paraguay clings on to its traditions, probably nostalgic about there past.

Anyways the next chapther will be Rosario and Buenos Aires (where we have some banging stories). Thank you again to our tour guide and his lovely girlfriend. I will comeback to Paraguay again if you give me free accomodation.

Hope Paraguay didn´t bore you guys too much.

Much love
Tom x

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