I went to the town of Filadelfia. I could probably end my blog entry with that. This is a town in the Chaco region which was formed by Mennonite Germans in northern Paraguay. Canadian Germans and others later were allowed to live there to escape religious persecution (and war crimes from WW2) because the land was inhabitable. Now it produces most of the country´s dairy. Its mostly German speaking and strange to see the bright white people among the dark indigenous. Its known for very dry cookie cutter streets, dairy, and germans. It was the second two, but the first one was wrong. At least for me. I went during the 1-2 month period that it rains. It was as muddy as muddy comes. You could not cross certain streets because of the lakes that formed. ... read more

NOTE: You may have noticed no photos on my last blog entry. From here on out there will be no more photos on my blog page and after my Paraguay blogs no more photos at all. I lost my USB connection cord to upload them from my camera. Being the cheap person that I am, I will not be buying another cord and finishing out my trip on my current 2 gig memory chip. I think I have another cord back in the states and when I return I will get the pictures online. Sorry to those of you that only looked at the pictures and not the stories. Time to practice your literary skills. We thought San Juan Bautista was close to the National Park Ybycui, but actually looked at a map when we got ... read more

Well I have to do Paraguay as a whole instead of individual places. This country is not big enough and I really did not see enough. Nonetheless it has been one of my favorite places in my trip. I arrived in Encarnacion which is a border town with Posadas, Argentina. I felt at home right away. On the bus ride into town you pass several markets that look similar to those in Peru. You can feel the negotiator in you get excited. It would not be like Argentina where prices are set. No no. This country is ranked as the second poorest in South America and you can see why....sort of at least. While it looks quite poor because of the streets and street vendors selling a variety of things one other thing stands out. You ... read more

After a very unexciting New Years in Buenos Aires I was a little sad. It was my fault for not having a good one, but I got over it. It was just another day and there is always another year. So the best part of it was listening to USC win the Rose Bowl on internet radio. So after New Years I knew that I had about 1 month to travel around Northern Argentina before returning to meet Dad and Jeff for our Patagonia trip. My destination: Uruguay! Well the exclamation point may be overkill. I went to Uruguay with a girl I have met various times on my trip in Peru, Ecuador, and now Argentina. We got on a ferry to Colonia and then a bus to Montevideo. The country´s Capital. We spent the night ... read more

After a 16 hour bus ride I made it to the highly anticipated Mendoza. At first sight I was disappointed. I heard it was in the mountains and I hadn´t seen any vineyards. It is in Mendoza that 70 percent of the country´s wine is produced. When I arrived at my hostal I went into the tiny pool for a dip because it was even hotter there than in Buenos Aires. I did not do much, but walk around the first day to check out what the small city had to offer. Mostly just wide streets, large trees, and plenty of town squares. The atmosphere was one of relaxation, wine, and steaks. On day two I made the trip to wine central. It took a few bus rides, one collision with a taxi driver, and meeting ... read more