The view from the little bar where Sarah and I had steaks, Milanese style, for lunch. Not pizzas, as I had thought I was ordering. Still, two steak dinners plus drinks was about £6
Christmas decorations, Paraguay-style.
This man is selling barbecues converted from oil drums from the back of his truck.
All the above from Ciudad Del Este. Not what I had expected of it. The main centre is actually relatively small, outside of that the city is pretty green.
Another similarly named building to Studley.
Still hard to get used to Christmas is stifling heat.
From the outskirts of Ciudad Del Este, for a couple of hundred kilometres, the main road to Asuncion is a single lane of traffic each way, with lay-bys on either side, and all the houses are set just off these lay-bys. It appears that everyone in Paraguay owns at least one cow, because there seemed to be one outside each and every house, roaming free and munching on the foliage.
We felt the German influence quite strongly here, for some reason.
Some houses aren't as nice as others. Generally speaking, housing seemed in keeping with the rest of the rural continent (although we know the statistics suggest extreme poverty is much greater here than elsewhere)
More lush countryside. What really distinguishes it is this bright orange mud that makes up the whole continent. It gives the world a technicolour glow, and seems to stick to everything.
Anthills were in abundance.
The town of Caaguazu has a bus terminal. In Paraguay, towns seem a little better labelled than in Brazil, so it was much easier to track our journey when we got to Asuncion.
Pride in the flag. The new President Cartes says he wants people to feel even more patriotic by the time he leaves office. So far he seems to be doing ok, the Paraguayan people feeling more politically active now than ever before, having just thrown out a Senator for corruption thanks to some public naming-and-shaming. Impressive.
You can buy almost anything at the side of the road.
Huge BK ad going up over the highway.
A fire burns in the distance. Hard to tell if it is ominous or not. Later we saw a man burning quite a lot of trash by the side of the road, no one seemed interested.
We eventually stopped (unusual in that every bus so far has stopped at least every three hours of so for food breaks) and this lovely girl got on with an enormous basket of chipa, which is corn bread shaped in a ring. A Paraguayan speciality, and delicious to boot, these ones being fresh from the oven and flavoured with caraway seeds. I have photocopied a recipe from a magazine in the bus depot if anyone is interested. Some people were buying a dozen or so, we got four, but that cost us P$G12,000 which is about £1.50! Rip off! The guide book says they should be 10p each!
A bus is dwarfed by a huge Coke advert. Coke is available here in all the same forms as at home, and is as much if not more prevalent. However you can get it in glass bottles in almost every cafe and restaurant, and that makes me very happy, as that it the medium in which it tastes the best.
This man had more cows, and they were fenced in for a change.
Local buses are much closer to what you expect of Latin America. The place can look so modern, but turn a corner and see a couple of these and you might as well be in the 1950s again.
Local DVD rental store.
Take these prices, get rid of the last three digits and divide by 7.5. Thats the price in pounds. PER KILO.
NOT what people think Paraguay looks like.
Stalls in the outskirts of Asuncion.
The park round the corner from the bus station, offering various classes. We saw a gym doing Zumba. That was stranger than almost anything else.
It was dark when we arrived in the fairly busy bus station, and figured it prudent to take a taxi to the hotel. It was about a mile away, traffic was heavy enough, and our man took us down some back streets which definitely left us feeling a world away from the sophistication of Brazil and in a different world altogether. No tower blocks on the periphery of Asuncion, this is a town of dimly lit streets and little kiosks, and although we know the historical centre will look a little different, this is definitely a more exotic location.
Hotel Cecilia is quite grand, very hospitable, and our room is huge. We've got a rooftop swimming pool, spa, breakfast buffet (in ten minutes time), and AC. We are very happy and ready to enjoy Christmas, Paraguay-style.
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