Dictators Monsanto and Jesuits . Paraguay has always intrigued me by this landlocked country . People here are very friendly and have had dictators and ex Nazis aplenty. The Jesuits were expelled by the Spanish as they had become to friendly with the local Guareni Indians . I think they feared an alternate state to thieves loyal to the pope rather than Spain . Now much of the land is given up to growing Soya to feed cattle. The trip from Argentina was great fun involving a dilapidated ferry and the back of a truck . We now have a hire car for a few days . Very few tourists of any description. I suppose not too surprising bearing in mind the heat and humidity.
South America 
Day 6: Paraguay
Hmmmm! Neil had sent me an email with an article about the violence and lawlessness in this remote and poor country. It didn’t sound inviting at all.
We checked out of the hotel and hailed a taxi to the ‘ferry’ which we’d been watching from our hotel room. It was a simple floating platform with no engine and some benches secured along one side. A tug was latched to the other side which propelled it across the river to Paraguay. Neil immediately set off to chat to a lorry driver. When he came back he confessed that he knew there was no transport for us on the other side. I grinned. This is why we travel so well together. It was an adventure after all.
His new friend, the driver, carried his daughter and baby granddaughter in the cab next to him and his son on the bench latched to the open rear of the truck. As instructed, we threw our bags into the back, climbed into the back to join the son on his bench as his Dad drove off. We all hung on tightly as the lorry bounced it’s way to the nearest town and taxi. We both acknowledged how trusting the lorry driver had been, waiting for us at the rudimentary customs and passport control. Sitting on the open lorry, I was grateful for my new sun hat as there was no protection from the burning rays.
Neil has a GPS set of maps installed on his iPhone so we were able to guide our taxi driver to the only car rental place in Ciudad del Este. Our car was like a little VW Polo and was adequate for our needs. We set off towsrds Encarnacion where we’d booked a hotel the night before. Such are the wonders of the internet. We never have to plan more than a day ahead.
Just before Encarnacion we visited the ruins of some Jesuit monasteries. They were rather grand red brick ruins recently restored showing the foot prints of the original plans. It seems the Jesuits looked after the local Guarani people rather well. They gained so much popularity and influence that the Spanish government withdrew all their funding in the mid 1800s and demanded their return to Spain. Neither Neil nor I had realised the huge power of the Pope and his Jesuits have, even to this day.
I’m afraid to say I gave in to the heat during the visit to second site. I felt queasy with a headache so I quickly scanned the Jesuit ruins and returned to the shade of the car while Neil explored further.
Our hotel in Encarnacion was very basic, but adequate. Neil dipped in the pool and, after lying in the cool air conditioned room for 20 mins I was as right as rain.
Encarnacion is a settlement on the north bank of the river Paraguay far inland from the ocean, so we had very open minds as to what kind of ‘beach’ we would find on its northern shore. We were most surprised to find a huge white sandy beach with kids swimming and playing volleyball, and beach cafes lining the shoreline. Was the sand imported? In the subsequent days we learnt that most of Paraguay is a great big sand pit. By building this huge damm across the river Paraguay, they had created sandy beaches on both the Argentinian and Paraguayan sides. It’s a seaside haven for these inland dwellers.
We enjoyed a huge pizza and cocktails at a beach bar before returning to the hotel in safely. Perhaps Paraguay isn’t quite the violent country portrayed in the press. Perhaps?
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Day 7: Driving to Asunción
We drove the 400km from Encarnacion to Asunción. The main roads in Paraguay are paved, but all other streets are either cobbled with granite blocks, flint or just red dirt and sand. And the standard of the driving was awful! Cars, and lorries alike, overtook us on blind bends or hills at great speed. They’d cut in front of you without notice and beep at you if you are not driving fast enough.
The countryside was mostly lush and green full of acres and acres of farm land and crops of soya and sugar cane. We past enormous grain stores and agricultural equipment factories. At times the green rolling hills could almost be England except for the odd palm tree dotted around.
On the whole, the quality of our road was fine with not too many potholes. After a long day of driving, we checked into our ‘Arthaus’ boutique hotel. I LOVED it!! It was full of beautiful paintings. It was air-conditioned and had a pool. Perfect for us both.
We wandered the dark cobbled streets, soaked a by a recent downpour, in search of a restaurant. Most were pretty tacky with huge metal barrels in the front of them serving as barbecues. This was MEAT country.
But finally we found a great little place serving decent fish dishes. At 8 pm it was almost empty and had the TV playing the Federer v Roanic tennis match from the last Wimbledon. It was perfect.
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Day 8: Asunción
Our day started well. We visited the Barro art museum nearby, which was full of high quality artwork and fascinating ancient artefacts from all over S America . It was also a mini museum describing Paraguay’s violent history. At its worst Paraguay waged war against its 3 border countries at the same time: Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia, loosing 3/4 of its men and boys and 1/4 of its land as it was defeated by all. Even after those heavy losses, a few years later it waged war again against Bolivia and lost another swathe of land. From 1952 it was ruled by a violent dictator Stroessner, who tortured and murdered anyone who opposed him. He paid his generals well and the whole country became a corrupt and a scary place to live. His henchman prime minister used a blow torch and various other horrendous devices to punish people. Finally in 1982 the dictator was overthrown and escaped to Brazil. For a while life improved for the poor people of Paraguay although we gather the politics here is still pretty corrupt.
So….. newly educated, Neil drove us towards the historic part of the capital city. He did a neat little left turn across the dual carriageway and was immediately pulled up by a policeman on a motorbike.
Now, our peace loving Neil can get pretty shirty with authority at times. At first he played dumb at not being able to speak Spanish then, as he realised this man was determined to fine us, so started arguing with him in Spanish. He didn’t have his driving licence with him either. This ‘discussion’ went on for quite a while with me whispering ‘be nice’. Finally we managed to get away with a £20 fine. Well, it was a bribe really as no paperwork was exchanged and we hoped the poorly paid policemen would dine well with his family that evening. The policeman insisted I drive from then on as I had my licence with me.
I love driving and Asunción was a crazy city to drive in. It was a solid loud mass of almost stationary traffic, pot holes and no road signs. The Toyota Hilux trucks seemed everywhere to be the mafia car of choice. These drivers didn’t bother with red lights or any kind of courtesy. We even followed a burly guy holding a machine gun in the passenger seat.
Luckily we found a street where we could pay someone to look after our car while we explored the city. We wanted to return to all 4 wheels and windscreen wipers still attached.
It is such a poor city, similar to Havana at times. Streets had rubble pavements full of rubbish and deep filthy puddles and most buildings seemed derelict reflecting their faded grandeur. It’s the wealth from it’s corrupt past was long gone. We finally found a great bar in an old colonial building overlooking the palace and cooled down over a huge beer. Neil is most impressed with Paraguay as the beer always arrives in an ice bucket. Then, we explored the building and stumbled across a substantial exhibition for the Paris Dakar car rally! In 2009 it was moved to S America because of the terrorism threats in Mali, Mauritania etc. How ironic that we came across the real thing having met in the spoof Plymouth Dakar car rally. We were really excited and sat to watch a film of previous rallies showing riders ring thrown off their motorbikes and lorries taking off over huge bumps in the road. It was really exciting and Neil became determined to enter until I pointed out the enormous cost per team. I.e millions of $$$$$$$$
As we wandered further we saw the exhibition centres being built around the palace and government buildings to house the huge support teams their desert vehicles: cars, motorbikes and lorries which would arrive the next day. Maybe it’s a good thing we left before the real mayhem started, although we would have loved to have seen it. Maybe another time!!!
It was quite a relief to drive out from the hot city centre and return to our safe neighbourhood. That evening we found a quirky restaurant recommended on the internet and not far from our hotel. It was a converted colonial house with old books and furniture, including a grandfather clock, and was serving deliciously healthy food. That evening was film night! It was airing the National Geographic documentary film ‘Before the Flood’ with Leonardo Di Caprio, but was dubbed into Spanish. After our meal we stayed a while to watch, but our Spanish wasn’t good enough to follow and we left. It’s free to download in 150 countries and well worth watching when we get home.
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Day 9: More police and a Tornado
So…… off we went to drive the 360km from Asunción to Ciudad del Este along the busiest road in Paraguay. After our encounter with the police, I decided to hide most of our Paraguayan money and dollars in case we were stopped again.
There were 2 things we noticed as rather different. One was the number of vast petrol stations along the route. Neil counted 9 in fist one small town! The other was the way they displayed their roadside stalls. There’d be 500m of ladder shops, then a few miles along there’d be 20 pineapple stalls. Another area sold plastic toys for 500m and another might sell hats. If you wanted to buy some grapes, you might have to travel 50 miles to get to the grape section.
It’s very difficult to work out speed limits. They’d have a 40kph sign before a town and speed bumps then nothing to end the restriction. Sometimes there’d be a sign saying it was the end of the urban area, but no speed limit so we didn’t know how fast to drive. The other roads we’d driven on hadn’t been a problem but this road was packed with heavy lorries and impatient drivers. We’d watch mothers trying to cross the road with their children and vehicles making sudden dangerous U turns. Police controls were everywhere so Neil drove reeeeeeally carefully to avoid another meeting with them.
But still we got stopped by the police! What now? With me constantly whispering ‘be nice’ and Neil doing his best to stay calm, it took ages to work out what we’d done wrong. I was constantly smiling and trying to be helpful, and to be fair, the pretty police lady was nice too. Eventually a burly policeman came over with google translate on his phone which told us that we needed our side lights on the ‘highway’. What highway? It was just a regular chaotic road. Ah well. Anyway, after much discussion about money and us showing we had little local currency left, they let us off. The policeman even typed into google translate ‘have a good journey’ and gave us a great big smile. Phew. That made the score 1-1.
On we travelled and the driving was appalling. There were shrines to departed loved ones all along the road. Parts were dual carriageway but most was single lane traffic with some sections with a speed limit of 110kph! Slow moving farm vehicles heavily loaded with sugarcane shared the road with aggressive Toyota Hilux trucks and bad lorry drivers trying to pass in crazy places.
Despite Neil’s near perfect driving, we were stopped again by the police! Neil kept asking in Spanish to find out what we’d done this time. But this time the policeman was more aggressive pointing to the light switch saying we should have had them on full beam. This was beginning to sound like a set up. Neil tried to explain that we already had our lights on as advised by the previous police, but the situation was getting difficult and I was quite relieved when he gave up on Neil and came round to my side. I tried to explain in my useless Spanish , using all the charm and smiles I could muster, that we’d already been stopped about the lights, but he wouldn’t have any of it. He kept asking for ‘pagar’ – payment and I kept showing him the scant contents of my wallet. Then he kept asking for dollars and I kept offering him a credit card which didn’t interest him. He was amazed we had no money, local or dollars and called over his boss. Still I smiled and explained all over again that we had no cash as we were going straight to Argentina where we’d use our cards to draw out more money. And still he argued. Finally he gave up and almost threw Neil’s driving licence back at us and let us off. The score is now 2-1!!! We had one final night in Paraguay before returning the car.
Then came the tornado!! We saw it forming off to our left and the wind was whipping up the sand at the side of the road into spirals. From my days of tornados in Colorado, I knew they can steer in completely random directions so the best thing was to keep going, keeping an eye out for the nearest shelter should it get too close. The massive black spiralling cloud formed to our left and lines of lorries were parked end to end on our right, but other cars kept driving as we did. Following our GPS instructions we turned directly towards the storm which had started to calm slightly. The cloud wasn’t as dense as earlier and was no longer spiralling. Instead the rain started to lash down with thunder and lightning crashing around us. Relieved that the tornado danger had passed we felt really excited about what we’d seen. For a while I stopped my navigating and used Neil’s phone to take some photos.
Soon we were near our destination to discover that Neil had excelled himself in his choice of accommodation. We drove through a security check into a private millionaire’s estate! It was the Beverley Hills of Paraguay called the Parana Country Club and our 5* hotel was right in the middle. Yes!!!! Neil Rushton had actually booked us into a 5* hotel. Yippee!!!
Ok, it had no electricity due to the storm so we had to use the torches from our iPhones, but it’s a genuine 5* hotel at Neil’s last minute prices. Our room was elegant and enormous overlooking tropical gardens and a lovely pool.
We went for a walk in the sultry evening air around the estate full of mansions with sculpted gardens and huge sparkling clean cars: Mercedes, BMWs and Hiluxes, parked on the pristine driveways or inside huge garages hidden underneath the houses. Many had at least one golf buggy parked outside where they could drive to their private country golf club and around the course. This is where the serious money is (honest or otherwise). We just hoped we wouldn’t see any more machine guns for a while.
The hotel was empty apart from a family with kids playing in the pool. We were the only people in the restaurant that night. It was a little eerie, but quite a giggle as we made up gangster stories.
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just fantastic to hear all the details. Though it all sounds very scary!!!! What experiences! what fun??!! HAPPY NEW YEAR. What a way to see the new year in!
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