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Published: March 5th 2011
Jesuit Ruins
Ruins in Trinadad outside EncarnationSo this is the first of what I hope to be several blogs about my girlfriend and I’s three month trip through South America. We are already about 2 weeks into the trip and having a great time.
We do not have a definite plan but more of a vague idea about where we want to go, so we just went ahead and just bought one-way tickets to South America.
The first leg of our trip was to head from Denver to Miami for a night. We were flying on a United 757 and a few hours after we left United grounded all of their 757’s for some sort of repair. Our next flight was the following day from Miami to Asuncion, Paraguay via Sao Paulo, Brazil. As we were about to land in Sao Paulo there was a loud bang and a big flash of light over the wing and a fair amount of screams from the passengers. Did we get stuck by lightening or did a Toucan fly into the engine? - I do not know. However we landed uneventfully, but they were inspected the plan after we landed. I hope this is not the
Asuncion Skyline
The view from the roof of our hotel tone for the rest of the travel.
Asuncion
Our first destination was Asuncion, Paraguay, which is the second poorest country in South America (behind Bolivia I believe). Asuncion is the capital and quite a like able city. It borders on the river the Rio Paraguay and the city center where we stayed was not far from it. It is definitely a poor city by US standards with things being more rundown. You might see a rundown building, but then an adidas store down the way. Another example showing some of the contrasts in the city is with the main legislative building in the city, which is a very elegant looking glass building by the river. However about 500 yards closer to the river is a shanty town where people are picking through bags of trash. We did also see a horse drawn cart making its way down a street.
This makes it sound kind of depressing, but really the city was a pleasant place to be. There are little plazas here and there and many street side cafes. The people were always very friendly and tolerant of my in ability to speak Spanish (At some point I
asked Quinn in Spanish if she wanted a dog salad "Ensalada de perro" when she really wanted the more boring chicken salad "Ensalada de pollo" .). Also another odd thing I have noticed in a couple of cities is the presence of police standing on most corners in the center of the city. I am not sure if this should reassure me or make me more worried.
Another question everyone is dying to know the answer to is how do they go to the bathroom down there. Well much the same way we do, but bidets are very common. I have learned a useful thing about them. The knobs are very sensitive, and I have on several occasions sent 5 foot geysers of water into the air.
While in Asuncion, we made a day trip to the city of Itagua, which is about 40 minutes outside the city. This was our first experience with buses, and it went much like the plane flights. About half way through the bus broke down and everyone got off. Then a few minutes later another bus came buy and clipped our bus, removing the mirror and some side paneling. After this excitement
we hoped on the next bus and continued on to Itagua, which turn out to be a pleasant little town.
Encarnation
Next we headed down south to the city of Encarnation. This time we took a nice looking double decker bus. Several hours into the trip we heard a loud sound and the bus pulled over. I was never able to figure out what was going on, since no one spoke English. Unfortunately judging by the number of police and the ambulance our bus probably hit someone.
By the time we arrived in Encaration about 4 hours later than expected it was around 10pm and raining. Now it turns out Encarnation is the Paraguayan carnival capital, and they celebrate it every weekend in February. It was a Saturday night, which meant every place was booked. Eventually we were able to talk to a random guy who suggested we go across in the border to Posadas, Argentina. So we hoped in a cab around midnight, negotiated customs, and finally found a place to stay. Posadas was a relatively nice upscale border town, so we decided to base ourselves there for a couple of days.
The next days
we headed back to Paraguay to visit some Jesuit ruins that were about 20 miles outside of Encarnation. They date from the mid 1700’s. (The Jesuit’s were a European religious order who wanted to convert the local Guarani people to Christianity.) While waiting at a covered bus stop for the bus back to Encarnation: it started to sprinkle, then it started to rain, then it started to rain sideways, and then there was a waterfall overhead. While this was going on we made friends with group of South American tourists. One of the girls was quite intent on not waiting for the next bus and flagged down a semi. In the time it took us to run out to the bus and for all 6 of us to pile in, I was so wet I might as well have been showering with all my stuff.
On our way back over the border that evening to Argentina, we got see a drug bust where some guy had at least 400 kilos of marijuana in his van.
That wound up being it for our time in Paraguay.
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Sharon Boyd
non-member comment
wow
Hope the rest of your trip is uneventful verging on boring and safe, but beautiful scenery.