With a heavy heart we have left Asuncion. Five nights was barely a drop, a suggestion, of what this city keeps behind its doors. It's enormous, colonial, in the process of rejuvenation doors. What pleasant people to deal with! What a number of weird-looking street folks! What a massive discrepancy between haves and have-nots!
Not that Asuncion can do much about this at the minute; there is a lot of work to be done to infrastructure before you will see a marked increase in jobs, and there needs to be a simultaneous improvement in education standards too. Too many people easily slipping below the net, ending up in poverty, or back in it, or never leaving it.
As I write, Uruguay has already proposed allowing the deep-water port of Rocha to Bolivia and Paraguay as their access to the ocean, after an eternity as land-locked countries. Both countries will be able to export their products with ease, increasing their interaction with a world Paraguay, at least, reflects in as a mirror, twisted and turned and shattered in places.
Paraguay has surprised me, and I am not often surprised. It was so much like I expected, except much more so. Shopping centres are full of western stores. McDonald's and Burger King are here (although no Subway or KFC), and do a roaring trade. Yet the shopping centres are all priced in dollars and have enormous projection screens to show the English football on. The supermarkets also have plasma TVs for football. People mostly dress like Westerners, except they look exotic due to their mestizo heritage. There is a TV on the bus showing a show about people performing pranks on each other. The bus is otherwise made of a single sheet of metal and shakes your soul as it races along the streets. There is bacon here, good coffee, the finest orange juice in the world, steak sandwiches, mixed chicken and meat kebabs, Murphys stout in bottles, good granary bread, pubs brewing their own beers, so many fireworks for sale everywhere, traders jump on the bus at traffic lights and sell everything from Coke to Cif, men with shotguns in every bank, and so much more. I have heard music here I have not heard in ten years. Here, there seems to be a kind of invisible filter to repel anything too modern. There's a sort of classic feel to this place, for which modernity will eventually make its way here, across the massive flatlands that surround it, and assimilated with the casual shrug of a people accustomed to sitting on the footpath all day, to sell a single football, sipping their tereré and letting the heat smother all they can see.
It feels like home. It feels like somewhere to stay for a very long time because there is a lot you could learn here.
For eighteen months I walked around the streets of Belfast saying "Christmas in Paraguay" because it was so unbelievable I had to make myself believe it was happening. And it did happen, such a straightforward event that I don't want to think about it, it would make me feel stupid having put such an emphasis on it. Yet I could give you a step by step guide to being here, getting here, where to stay, things you should know so you don't spend days doing what we did, losing time, seeing the city from bouncing buses and eventually departing with an air of disappointment, yet confident that we would be here again before this holiday is finished.
You could fly to Sao Paulo from the UK; it's the cheapest destination in Latin America at the minute. You would just jump on a bus and take the 12 hour journey to Foz Do Iguazu because it is a pleasant place to spend a couple of days and see the Falls if you haven't already. Then you jump across the border to Paraguay, straight to the Terminal De Omnibus, and catch another bus to Asuncion, a mere 6 hours this time. Thats if you didn't have a connecting flight from Sao Paulo.
Christmas In Paraguay was spent in the charming and generous Hotel Cecilia, with our free iced panettone and rooftop bathing pool, steak sandwiches, fine local beer, and 40 degree sunshine baking our little festive souls alive. A couple of FaceTime / Skype calls home to happy souls in more traditional conditions, and the day was finished with a classy meal in the La Preferida, Cecilia's restaurant and all-round fine dining experience. First taste of catfish (or Supurí) too.
When planning this part of the trip, we had speculated that transport would either be non-existent during the holiday period, or it would be utterly normal and incredibly busy. It was the latter. Transport eases off late in the day on Christmas Eve, there is little-to-nothing on Christmas day, but then everything is very much normal on the 26th December, which is not a significant day here. Knowing we wanted to head to Uruguay on Saturday, we attempted to get to the Terminal De Omnibus to buy tickets. 7km out of the centre, we made it difficult by getting on the right bus in the wrong direction, only to have to change at the end of the line and head right back through the city. It was nice seeing areas you wouldn’t normally have an excuse to see, yet much of Asuncion wears the same sort of face; closed, shutting out the heat, and the difference between the nice little houses (well-kept, tidy gardens) and the not so nice (virtually the same but just on a different street, you can tell by the kids running around) is hard to discern.
Our mood is not helped by the only company who run a bus to Montevideo being booked out until 6th January. We drink a big beer and ponder our route; many more options have opened up since we discovered how to take advantage of the illegal rate of the Argentine Peso. Reverting to our original plan, to jump to Montevideo through a series of little stops, we now take 8 days to get there rather than a 24 hour bus journey.
It all seems to simple, and we attempt to get a bus back to the hotel to reschedule our accommodation. Once again, wrong bus. At the city limits I realise the error and we exit, in need of water, and Sarah is feeling the cumulative effect of exhaustion. A rest in a garage, a quick walk round a nearby shopping centre in the cool AC breeze, and a fine BK burger, and we manage to catch the right bus home.
I asked for a Lurgan spade. No response.
There is virtually no draught beer in Paraguay. There are, however, an awful lot of litre bottles of lager.
Sarah samples lager for the first time ever and declares "Im thirsty"
A nice house.
A nice house eventually.
This is a children's playhouse sort of thing, disguised as a boat.
Plaza De Las Americas
More charming building artwork
A shopping centre with an enormous projection screen, so you can eat your Burger King meal and watch Man Utd playing.
Our ability to meet strange and exciting people was not hampered by staying in a hotel. Over breakfast we get chatting to Vania and David (of vaniaanddavid.com fame) and make plans for a dinner date. Naturally, this being Paraguay, dinner moves from 9pm at Bolsi to almost 11.30pm and Bolsi, post-hotel beers and chat as we wait for their son to nap, and we arrive as the waiter plans to clear the tables and go home. Vania gets bolshy in Bolsi and we get our table, and ultimately a delicious dinner (yet more catfish for me, risotto for Sarah, which may be more accurately described as chicken with savoury rice from a packet). Lots of talking, excellent company, and we mosey back to the hotel for a final draught of beer before bidding them farewell at 2.30am, Sarah having had her fill of fine chunky jewellery and designer gossip.
Sarah and Vania after a fine dinner
David And Vania.
Final day in Asuncion and we are desperate to actually do something of note. The city is thwarting our efforts to be interested in her! All we want is the Museo Del Barro, Asuncions tourist-friendly Mud Museum, full of primitive art and easily-appreciated artifacts. Some hope. Google Maps has entirely the wrong location for the museum, and we spend a few hours wandering in frustration trying to locate it, not helped by yet more inaccurate directions from friendly locals (as grateful as I was at the time). Hungry eats our nerves, and we eventually have a club sandwich, never learning anything about ourselves, and jump on one final bus to take us up to the big shopping centre, and drops us right outside the museum. Typical. I use some choice adjectives to describe Google, and we go brand-spotting in Shopping Mariscal Lopez. We also enjoy a 2-for-1 offer on pints.
Paraguay's football champions of 2013, Cerro Porteno
Another children's playhouse
Yes Ma, this actually happened.
Delicious 2-for-1 pints. A quid each.
Another children's play area, this time in the shopping centre. Paraguayan's are very good with kids.
This bizarre Irish-esque shop sold rugby shirts and whatnot. I have actually seen people wearing them.
One of my favourite moments, a shopping complex called Big Manazana ('Big Apple') where... there is an Apple Store.
Home at last. Swim, the whole rooftop is ours to enjoy and we become speechless as the sun descends and an electrical storm rages across the river in Argentina. We are in unexplored territory here. The clouds are illuminated from within, we watch forks of lightning cross the sky and occasionally scorch the earth. You hear no thunder at this distance, even though the city seems subdued.
Nothing left to do but try to find the Britannia Pub, one of the top-rated venues in the city, and acclaimed for its pub food. Dander round the block get assaulted by an explosion of fireworks in the middle of the road. Every corner of the city features a stall selling an array of flash and crackle, and it looks a little like someone just decided to blow up their entire stock for the hell of it. Cars stop a block back and, when its done, drive past like its the most normal thing in the world. It might be, here. Round another corner, mas o menos, and there is Britannia Pub; sure enough it is an enormous place, full of German beer (not particularly British, admittedly), tiny bars secreted off in little rooms, and full to the brim with Friday night revellers. It’s not difficult to see the attraction. One Super-Britannia burger and chips later and I fall asleep. Time for bed.
A final aside: Friday morning, mid-research, we receive a call from reception. “Excuse me, but are you staying for one extra day?”. A vague memory of dates not seeming quite right from day one surfaces, and I head to the lobby with my booking print-out to sort it all out. The problem is some sort of system error, and nothing much to do with me, which doesn’t always mean very much. In this case, however, we are offered a suite for the night as our room is already booked. Our Man in Asuncion seems to be suggesting it will be the same price as the room we already have. That seems to be a fair deal to me. Half an hour later we are in Room 320, the Blue Suite, and a substantial upgrade. Sarah is ecstatic with our sunken bath and his-n-hers sinks.
A pity, then, that we had no time to use any of it. Saturday morning comes early, and we enjoy our final breakfast before our 10am check out. Goodbye bacon. Goodbye ginger cake and blackcurrant jam. Goodbye medialunas with custard, wholegrain bread, papaya and Arsenio. You will be sorely missed.
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