Step Aside Marco Polo

I am his South American equivalent. I discovered the spice route.

Unfortunately, finding something picante in South America took a hell of a lot longer than I ever anticipated. Calling Chile home, crossing Argentina, circling through Uruguay, and zigzagging Paraguay in my quest - all fruitless. But thanks to Bolivia that is quickly changing.



Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay (not Uruguay quite as much) have insanely bland foods. There are wonderful meats and seafoods (minus Paraguay), but nothing has much kick.

Well, Bolivia is my savior. (On a side note - Bolivia is named after Simón Bolivar who was known as El Libertador. The liberator or savior.) So it makes sense that they´ve come through for me here.

I entered Bolivia on the east and have worked my way from Villa Montes to Tarija and now Tupiza in the south.

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One thing that has really called my attention is the connection with Venezuela and Cuba. New socialist president Eva Morales, the first indigenous president in South America, has nationalized gas and is taking large socialist steps.

People constantly ask me about what the US thinks about Bolivia´s new position in the anti-US federation of sorts. (Cuba and the US don´t have good relations as most people know. Venezuelan president Chavez hates Bush and rants weekly on national television against the US. And now Bolivia considers itself in that mix by having a socialist leader and good relations with 2 anti-US nations.)

It´s hard to explain that there is almost no news of any of the three back in the US. I imagine that the majority of people reading this had almost no idea about any fresh hostilities with the US against those 3 countries. I generally explain that the US has enough to think about with war in Iraq and many other interests. And that there don´t seem to be immediate dangers with Venezuela, Bolivia, or Cuba.

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There have been tons of parades.



Selling cotton-candy alongside the troops. And Bolivia´s Navy...think about it. Lake Titicaca offers the only major waterbody for them to use that diving gear in. Also...this is eastern Bolivia. Meaning damn hot. I can´t imagine wearing a wetsuit for an entire parade!



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Caja de Lustroz

Rey has been shining shoes for years now. He earns 1 Boliviano per shoe...so $0.25 per pair. He was quite happy to have his pictures taken.







He also helps run a tiny stand with goodies. He said that gum and cigarettes sell best!

Guten Tag

Why not have a little fair-skinned wonderland in the middle of northern Paraguay? It makes sense to me!

Filadelfia is one of the main Mennonite colonies in north-central Paraguay. There are German, Canadian and Ukranian colonies. It was honestly funky to arrive and see and hear German in the middle of Central America. And I actually didn´t stick out. Blondes and redheads (pelirojos) were everywhere. Several people spoke German to me before realizing that I wasn´t a local.

And in case you are wondering...Mennonites drive cars and use electricty. They are quite different from Amish.

The Mennonites have quite a bit of money compared to other Paraguayan regions and it is reflected in SUVs and an obviously higher quality of life than many of areas. The main street is lined with indigenous and non-Mennonites who wait to be picked up every morning as day laborers.

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While waiting to catch my bus to Bolivia I was disturbed out of a light slumber to have the Paraguayan drug control stop ask me to behave myself as they were doing a thorough anti-drug search.
Behaving myself meant not being able to sleep for over an hour as they painstakingly humiliated each and every person on the arriving bus from Bolivia by first using dogs and then hand searching all bags.
ALL BAGS. There were like 50 people and with 2 bags a person - ahhhh. I was so tired. And the Anti-Fun (not wanting anyone to have drugs or sleep) took their damn sweet time. Luckily the search wasn´t reciprocated when arriving in Bolivia the following morning.

PPP - Proyecto Pavimiento Paraguayo

I could write award-winning development project names for a living. FDR used me all those years ago with the New Deal nicknames for everything.

The Paraguayan Pavement Project would also have to incorporate most of what I´ve experienced in Bolivia thus far.

I took a bus on the Trans-Chaco (Highway...I think it´s called) and the Picada 500 from central Paraguay to eastern Bolivia. They are famed as the two bumpiest and dustiest roads in the world.

I had doubts. Never have doubts.

Imagine a 12 hour butt-flexing exercise and you understand. It was insane. And I somehow slept off and on. Without a doubt it was the bumpiest ride of my life. And the dust infiltrated everything. Quite an experience.

I anticipated the infamous Chaco to be a desert littered with small shrubs and bushes. Oh no.

This is what Prince Charming went through to get to Sleeping Beauty. It was insane. I hope she was worth it for him because I wouldn´t be heading into any forests like this. Impenetrable growth of 2-story cacti and thick trees make up the Chaco. Honestly, the largest cacti I´ve ever seen in my life.

And somehow Bolivia and Paraguay fought a war from 1933 to 1935 over this life-forsaken area. I got to experience the national holidays in both countries commemorating the June signing of La Paz del Chaco. The Chaco Peace.

Best Travel Company Name Ever

Paraguay takes the cake.

NSA - Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. That would translate to Our Lady of the Assumption.

I trust no company like the one named after the Holy Mother of God who safely was ASSUMED into Heaven.

Here are some odds and ends.

What do you call a bus in South America? Well, that depends on where you are.

Chile - Micro or Bus
Argentina - Omni
Paraguay - Collectivo
Uruguay - Omnibus or Collectivo
Bolivia - Flota

I generally default to Micro because that´s what I know best. But Flota might become my favorite!

What do you spend in South America? Well, that depends on where you are.

1 US Dollar = $500 Pesos Chilenos. A normal meal is $3,000-4,000.
1 US Dollar = $3 Pesos Argentinos. A liter of Quilmes (the main beer there) is $2.50.
1 US Dollar = $24 Pesos Uruguayos. An amazingly condimented hamburger or chorizo (sausage) is about $17.
1 US Dollar = $5,000 Guaranies in Paraguay. A rica chipa (small breadish bagel-like thing) is $1,000.
1 US Dollar = $8 Bolivianos in Bolivia. I had breakfast for $4.50. That´s like U$0.60!

IBS and Stinging Pee

Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Thank God No. My personal diagnosis is Irregular Bowel System.

Traveling simply wreaks havoc on your system. The amount, style, and type of food I eat varies hugely from one day to the next. This means that sometimes I go days without visiting a restroom, only to have to find one in a state of near emergency at another random moment.

And the urban legend of drinking large quantities of citric juices having the undesirable effect of painful urination - is luckily just a myth. At least for me, because I drink crazy amounts of orange juice. It´s great down here. And I take advantage. ¡A veces 2 litros por día!

Chocolate milk is also great. I try to stick to the half-liters for the sake of my aforementioned system. However, nowhere does the chocolate milk live up to Chilean standards. There it is far better than any other I have tried.

So don´t worry about me. It doesn´t hurt to pee and at least my bowels aren´t irritable.

...always one in a crowd

In this case, that´s probably not true. One of Fuerte Olimpo´s permanent riverfront residents (at least for the past 2 years) is the British family of John, Gina and 10-year-old son Frankie.

The family lives on a 73-year-old boat formerly owned by famous Argentine Eva Peron ( a.k.a - Evita). They´ve been in South America for over 35 years and living in the (what they say was once beautifully restored) boat for 11 years now. Although they told me many stories over several glasses of wine-spiked juice as we sat around the boat, I can´t fully comprehend what their lives must be like.

Frankie speaks Portuguese, Spanish, English and some Guaraní and has Paraguayan, English, and Argentine citizenships. No formal education is possible like what he is receiving. And he swears worse than any sailor I have ever met. I almost spit out my drink when he first started talking! And his parents are the obvious source of his tasty vernacular.

They pay the bills with John´s dental fees as they stop at estancias (ranches) and small towns along the river.

It´s fun to see how random life can be.

Ro Hajhu Paraguay (Pronounced "Row - High - Who")

Te amo, Paraguay. I love you, Paraguay.

One of the few Guaraní phrases I learned that actually stuck with me. Curre (coo-ray) means Pig. That´s all I´ve got. If you say Ro hajhu ParaguayA - it means I love whatever Paraguayan girl. Oh the subtleness of it all.

The boat trip brought me to Fuerte Olimpo in northern Paraguay - a small, quite town where I had to wait 4 days for the single bus that leaves the town.

But I was in good company. I stayed in a great little family-run place that Diego Sosa showed me. I met Diego on the boat - a great 26-year-old do-gooder who is an "ingeniero" as everyone calls him. An engineer who helps indigenous groups find supplies, make ends meet, and all sorts of general development goals at multiple locations around Paraguay.

We were set with 3 things to keep us occupied for the extended holiday weekend: Cerveza (cold beer from the fridge), Fútbol (watching the World Cup when there was electricity...the evenings proved difficult) y Malditos Mosquitos (constantly slapping my legs which got riddled by the annoying pests who somehow went through my multi-layered repellent)!

It was an interesting to get a real view of rural life.

I attended mass at a beautiful church perched atop one of the three hills that make up Fuerte Olimpo´s unique position at the lower end of The Pantanal (a huge marshy, swamp area that extends from northern Paraguay well into Brazil.) The first twenty minutes of pre-mass prayers and mass meant many of the roughly 20 people there (mainly older ladies thumbing over their rosaries with one hand and using the other to weild a little thatched fan on their legs and face against the mosquitos)

I also attended a local...no...correct that...THE LOCAL bar of Fuerte Olimpo. Diego and I got there late, meaning that the clientel was already ripe. We witnessed a sad fight between a Paraguayan girl who we sat with and an Indigenous girl. Although not at first, it quickly became a racist comment extravaganza for the lighter-skinned one. It was depressing and a harsh look at a part of society. Racism is large down here, just like anywhere else in the world.

On a related note - many people in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and already in Bolivia have asked me what I think of black people. It´s such an unusual question that it always throws me off. I explain that, unlike any of the aforementioned countries and their respective indigenous populations, there is a lot of diversity back in the US and that I know a good number of people from many different skin shades. The answer always seems to throw them off as well.

A Whole New World

(this should be read/sung to the Aladdin song)

I can show you the world,
Watery, Shiny starred, splendid.
Tell me, princess, now when did you
Last get robbed on a riverboat?!?

As great as the riverboat was...there were a few thorns on the ride.

My nalgene bottle (covered with many stickers from my travels) and my jacket (with about 8 years of loyal service) somehow disappeared on the trip! Both can be easily replaced, but the sentimental value was worth quite a bit.

Also, the guy who bought my harmonica told me that I could easily replace it in Fuerte Olimpo (my departure point), which was a massive lie. Finding water was difficult enough in F. O., let alone a harmonica.

It made sense to have some problems at the end of my time in Paraguay, which is known for its corruption, considering everything had passed without a single problem up until then!

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Luckily that wasn´t the case. But I did see many other people on the river is little lanchas (personal boats) as they slowly crossed back and forth the Rio Paraguay.

I now know where Gabriel Garcia Marquez (he´s a Colombian author if you´re scratching your head) gets his ideas. Read Love in the Time of Cholera and you will roughly understand my 3 days on the Rio Paraguay (minus any of the relationships, which is what the book mainly is).

Pure peace while on the river. And pure mayhem as soon as we dock at any tiny port along the way. Even in the middle of the night entire towns would come out to meet the boat.

At the beginning I thought it would be a hellish trip as we had well over 100 passengers crammed into every nook and corner. However, with every stop more people exited than entered (there were several exceptions to this) and more space slowly opened up. I ate next to nothing over the several days - some fruit and some granola bars. I just wasn´t hungry.


My hammock, which I rented for $3, was precariously placed over a bench on which several ladies would sit with their heads bent to the side to see around my feet. I generally went to bed late so as not to bother them too much, because by that time the bench had become a bed for one of them - the other even further down on the floor with her a sack of flour for a pillow. My view from the second floor included a window out to the river, 7 or 8 other hammocks in the hall to my right, and a vantage point above the maze of sleeping bodies strewn across the floor .

The banks were littered with crocodiles sunning themselves and cal (lime) factories spewing white dust. The sounds were the motors and the occasional explosion from lime quarries. Those and my bad harmonica playing. I now have Oh When the Saints and Amazing Grace down, though!



My hammock´s view. The chalky cloudiness surrounding every Cal factory.



I thought some of my Northern California friends might enjoy the name of this cal company - Norte Cal.




On the river was my favorite part. Camalotes (a lilypad-esque floating thing) brushed my legs as I sat with my legs dangling over. I bought a cheap harmonica in Concepción before embarking and it was a great companion.

The harmonica also allowed me to meet lots of people. They would come over to listen or inquire and I would pass it off and watch as someone new gave it a try. Some of the young indigenous boys loved it, but I ended up selling it to a guy who was going further upriver to work for a few months. It was interesting that the indigenous people mainly stayed and slept out of the deck while others were inside...just one of the small things I noted along the way.





We carried cargo of every type. Probably 15 or 20 motorcycles made their way on and off the little ramp used for boarding over the several days. We had fruit, furniture, bread, veggies, fish (dead), livestock and pets (alive) like pigs, dogs, cats, etc. Things came and went, sometimes without us stopping but merely having a small outboard motorboat tie on until the goods and people were loaded on.



The people were of a wide variety. So were the hats.



The stars were amazing. Great weather and plenty of mosquito repellent resulted in few problems.

Asunción - City of...

...Cabbies constantly sitting in little huts watching futbol while waiting on customers.
...Money changers (cambistas) constantly pegging every passerby, especially me the obvious gringo, with "¿Cambio...cambio?"
..."cibers" in which the internet goes down every 15 minutes or so while trying to finish a year-overdue research paper!
...misleadingly named local dishes that make one look quite foolish.



Thus was my time spent in Paraguay´s meek capital city. Rain and working on the overdue assignment unfortunately kept me indoors for the majority of my stay in Asunción.



And my plans for cutting the rug and going crazy Saturday night were hindered by my laying down to read and rest up for the amazing night to come at about 10 pm. I woke at 4 am to decide that it was too late even by South American standards to get a start on the partying at that point. Asunción doesn´t even know what it missed out on...and neither do I!



The Senate building above. The Presidential Palace at several different times below.





I did meet up with a motorcycle friend of Mea and Tim from their trip. Patricio, Cecilia and I spent a fun hour or two at a café catching up about everything from the upcoming Copa Mundial (the World Cup...it starts this week. The whole world will stop - minus the US, because we for some reason don´t value the greatness of soccer like the rest of the world.) to local eats such as Sopa Paraguaya (the direct translation is Paraguayan Soup).

Now...I´m no genius when it comes to languages, but Paraguayan Soup would give me the idea that it comes in soup form. I generally take that to mean a liquidy substance served in a bowl-esque device of sorts. ¡Oh how sly you are, Paraguay! I sat at a restaurant for about 10 minutes after receiving something resembling corn bread waiting for the accompanying soup. Nope! I eventually had to ask.Sopa Paraguaya is simply a corn breadish treat made that has onion, cheese and eggs mixed in with the corn bread. I can´t imagine how many foreigners do the exact same waiting game of stupidity. I did end up ordering a soup just to accompany the Sopa Paraguaya.

Patricio was dying because he said there is an Argentine comic who has a great skit about Sopa Paraguaya. He waits with a SPOON ready to consume the local treat and won´t switch utensils when he finally realizes the error because of his pride. My only option was a fork...until the real soup came!



Washing windows at Lido-Bar. I breakfasted several times at Lido-Bar and loved the place. However, they gave me the run-around about taking photos and kept handing me off to someone else at every turn. After trying for quite a while I gave up. The waitresses all wear matching orange skirt suits and bonnets. It´s adorable...even if some of the females aren´t!

I also found a little theatre playing out-of-date films, but the disgruntled owner would have died before letting me take photos of the hundreds of film rolls stacked on both sides of a staircase. He could only get out "Es prohibido....prohibido." And there was a sign saying that going up the stairs was prohibited (prohibido). When I asked if he could make an exception as the owner - explaining that I just thought it was a beautiful image and wanted to take some photos - his reaction was "¡Prohibido...(and then slightly quieter) prohibido!" Although rather ticked off at him, I felt bad for him just because he was so flustered by my presence.

What Guides Me? Not Me!

Sometimes luck is just too crazy to call luck.



For instance...how about the bus driver misunderstanding what I say as "Quiindy" for "Paraguarí?" Not too easy to do in my opinion. That little debacle allowed me to overshoot Quiindy by an hour or so, retrace my steps to arrive there after dark, bump into Lourdes and a friend as I was about to set up my tent on the side of the road, and instead spend the night with a great Paraguayan family on a night when God sent thunder and lightning and rain in such amounts that the pigs got so frightened they had to race through the house (2 rooms) several times just to wake us all up and let us know!



I honestly sometimes feel like I have zero control over the route I take - and it´s wonderful.

My chance happening in Quiindy resulted in spending simply wonderful time with some very humble, energetic and, frankly speaking, poor people. But poverty is something completely different here. To live in this manner in the US would be considered horrific, but it´s just life here.



They are Jonathan David, Angelina, Rodolfo, Lourdes and Ricardo. Jonathan David, his grandmother Angelina, and his aunt Lourdes live in the house. There were other friends and relatives who live nearby and stopped in throughout my time there.



In the two rooms there were two beds in total...and I got one of them. Angelina, Lourdes, and Jonathan David slept together in the other. They said that they always slept like that as I tried to take the floor...and I´ll never know for sure but it doesn´t seem to matter.

Angelina and several of his siblings have brick-making operations of sorts. They are small, family-owned and -worked businesses that help make the ends meet. They were working on about 16,000 bricks while I was there.



Angelina´s oven in the foreground and her sister-in-law´s two in the background. Her sister-in-law has been making bricks for over 25 years. Jonathan David sitting on some pieces drying out more as they are prepared for the oven.







Some almost finished bricks. And several ovens in other fields. The ovens are set up within several hundred feet of the fields from where the mud is brought.



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DON´T SHOOT. ELECT LIFE.



A fun sign in Parque National Ybycuí, where I spent 2 relaxed days camping.

These Crazy Border Towns

Ciudad del Este to Encarnación. The main difference are the Brazilian counterfeiters in C. de Este versus the Argentines here.

Actually, that proves to make a large difference. The general Argentine tranquilidad swam across the border and infected all the Paraguayans, resulting in a very calm city offering tons of unbelieveably good prices on fake and counterfeit goods!



A few kids catching lunch at the bus terminal in Encarnación. A good meal of pasta with chicken, a side of potato salad and a beer is just under $2!

I spent a few relaxed days in Encarnación, located at the southern tip of Paraguay, right across the Rio Paraná from Posadas, Argentina. While here I took advantage of the toll the last several hundred years took on the former Jesuit lands. Now the once magnificent examples of Jesuit conquesting glories stand in mere ruins of their former selves. Trinidad and Jesús are 2 good sites of large farms and areas controlled by the Jesuits before their Catholic expulsion because they were getting a little too powerful.



Here are a few shots from Trinidad. I like the traveling circus of sorts in the background. It was a very interesting place.



Southeastern Paraguay is made up primarily of colonies from when the government sold land at insanely low prices in an attempt to attract settlers (similar to the Mennonite communities in the north where land was given to them to keep them from continuing on to neighboring Argentina). Now there are many German and Brazilian colonies scattered on the iron-rich deep red land.

Encarnación´s waterfront is unfortunately sinking away slowly under the ever-rising Paraná thanks to the downriver Yacyretá Dam. However, it´s a really cool area because that´s where the black market is with all of its stalls and cheap food stands and general excitement.

Not having much room in my backpack, but wanting to have a Paraguayan national team jersey...I had to part with one of my 4 shirts. So I traded with one of the vendors and got the jersey for half-price, or $4, and he got a polyester red t-shirt! I am so Paraguayan now.

Actually I´m not. I stick out more than anywhere else. The entire world had told me that Paraguay is ugly or "¡Un país re-feo!" Although slightly darker overall than Chile, Argentina or Uruguay, the people are still very attractive and the countryside as well. I confess to still prefering Chilean and Argentine females, though...they´re just hard to beat!