Blogs from Paraguay, South America - page 19

On Sunday evening I began the infamous trans-Chaco route from Santa Cruz, which was reported as "30+" hours in my Lonely Planet -- and listed as an activity in the highlight section -- but I was encouraged by reports that the road had been improved since then. Furthermore, I was promised an 18-hour trip, with AC, full cama (bed) and TV/movies. Of course, all of that was a lie. At 2am we awoke to the passengers of another bus -- which had left on Saturday but gotten stuck because of the rain -- flooding onto the bus. While I felt fortunate enough to have a working bus, it still did not make for a comfortable trip, as I ended up standing for about 6 hours. Furthermore, the excess passengers caused several hour-long delays at the numerous ... read more

Steve's words: Another great border crossing into Paraguay, the locals just catch the boat, non locals catch a series of local buses to a bridge with big rusty holes in it, then wade through some mud, dodge our way past hundreds of people exchanging money, passport stamped then onto a tiny bus with far too many people on, and we're in. Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, the words of the lonely planet ringing in our ears "you could get mugged anytime" or something like that. We entered a quiet city of mostly low rise colonial design, with a few grand plazas, and a massive presidential palace. The roads lined by flowering trees, and full of Mercedes, in fact I have not seen so many in any one place since Albania!!! A day at the Jesuit Ruins; ... read more

After our different and remote boarder crossing from Brasil we failed to see any immigration on the Paraguayan side before we boarded our bus straight onto the first major town in Paraguay, Vallemi. The bus was really hot but the scenery was really amazing. We were in the middle of the Paraguayan Chaco (in Brasil it’s the Pantanal). After sweating the whole way we finally arrived in Vallemi. From here we would be able to catch an onward connection to Concepcion. We were dropped off by the bus at the house/office of the bus company to Concepcion. We had been told to be very careful in Paraguay, the country is the second poorest in South America and crime is rife. By now we had heard this about every neighbouring country on this continent so it was ... read more

Nous avons fait une visite rapide aux frontieres de trois pays: Paraguay, Argentine et Bresil en allant admirer les deuxiemes plus grandes chutes d'eau du monde apres celle de Victoria en Afrique: Les Foz d'Iguazu. Les photos parlent d'elles meme...Lorsqu'on arrive sur le site, on est un peu decu...enfin, je fut un peu decu car je m'attendais a quelque chose de plus grandiose, mais en fait, c'est simplement du au fait que l'on est super loin. Au fur et a mesure que l'on s'approche, on est mouille et emerveille car c'est vraiment baleze. On est cependant pas reste des heures car il fait pas tres chaud pour le moment au Bresil et une fois humide de la tete au pied, il faisait encore plus froid. Apparement, c'est un record de froid en cette periode dans le ... read more

An excellent breakfast with Helmuth and Nicoleta: yogurt and soft-boiled eggs, juice, tea, and hugs and pictures as we said goodbye, with promises to put them up should they come our way. We couldn’t really say we’d love to come back, much as we’ve enjoyed our visit with them. Not enough to draw us back to the Chaco! But we had a great morning getting a lot of our questions and misgivings about the Mennonite work with the native people answered. Heinrich Ratzlaff was there as we arrived at Yalve Sanga, the original native settlement, to explain the work of ASCIM - the indigenous/Mennonite organization that works at social development. This was illuminating. Turns out there are actually 9 different indigenous languages/cultures they’re working with, and most can’t understand each other without Spanish (or even Low ... read more