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.