Proponents of travel trailers and truck campers will tell you that vans are a pain because when they go into a shop so goes your home. True enough but when Layne looks for a place to stay she does occasionally score big. Behold our forty dollar a night accommodations in Caacupé Paraguay:
What you can’t see is fast WiFi, a comfortable bed with soft plush sheets, and off street parking that could accommodate GANNET2 if our van were staying longer than one night. As it is street parking seems fine.
It was a short 90 minute drive through the badly pot holed streets of ugly Asunción, the capital of the country to get to Caacupé and our apartment is just 15 minutes from Chris’ workshop where our water pump will be replaced.
It was easy to offload our lives from our home up a step into our apartment, the only one occupied at the moment in this small complex. We have the run of the place and could have parked GANNET2 up here in back under some low overhead wires and up a steep but manageable ramp, but it seemed more trouble than it was worth as this is a quiet neighborhood in a laid back town.
Layne immediately started stuffing our rugs into the washer and they are long overdue so that felt like a huge success.
Nightstands with lamps. Oh joy! So rare to have those and so pleasant. Fans keep the rooms chilly but there is a/c over the bed for really hot summer nights.
And across the street there is an eatery, closed on Monday unfortunately but we took advantage Sunday night.
Caipirinha (a sugarcane mojito basically, originating in Brazil) for appetizer and shawarma wraps for main.
Rusty enjoying his apartment couldn’t be bothered to get up so we took dinner home to keep him company.
It’s not all bad having to get a room when your home is in the shop. We could live in the van while it’s being worked on but Rusty is the problem as Chris’ territorial dogs patrol the workshop area and they would not like Rusty one bit. So dammit we are forced to live comfortably in town. Sigh.
To all external appearances life in Paraguay seems untouched by the banking scandal. Changing money today may be interesting but most likely it will be the usual routine. Show up with three hundred bucks and leave the bank with 1.8 million Guaraní (“waah-rah-knee”).
Just another day in funky Paraguay.
