On The Road

It arrived. 

We said goodbye to Inge the German:

And Mark the Englishman:

We paid our bill and got on the road.

Our destination was a campground an hour away between the towns of Coronel (Colonel) Oviedo and Villarica. Oviedo, a city of 55,000 was founded in 1758 and was first named for our Lady of Garlic. Would I kid about such a thing? Apparently garlic was a massively important crop when the city was founded. In 1931 they renamed it for Colonel Oviedo, a hero of the War of the Triple Alliance (which he miraculously survived). I do know it has a first rate supermarket according to the campground owner Attilio. 

I defy you to find anyone who has visited this country and who will tell you Paraguay should be a noted tourist destination. 

I’ve never met anyone who said that. It’s inexpensive, it’s not heavily developed, the people are very welcoming but tourist sites are not very obvious if they exist at all. 

We saw some hills in the distance but mostly we drove through untended ranch land. 

But the highway was a proper freeway and that was a pleasure to drive. And the second alternator was generating amps.

Paraguay Highway 2 is a four lane toll road between Asunción the capital and Ciudad Del Este (East City) the industrial center. 

The tolls are nothing to worry about, around $2:25 and payable in cash.

We zipped past the town of New London next to New Australia. I had no idea but Paraguay has been a magnet for immigrants forever. While we’ve been ignoring it, people moved here to make new lives. 

The campground is an event space and hangout for locals on the weekend. We have it to ourselves, flat parking on grass, shady but with enough open sky to operate Starlink and our solar panels.

Rusty was extremely reluctant to leave the campground where he got beaten up. It takes him a while to get used to a new place so he stuck close to home but usually he likes grass and shade and not being bothered by big dogs. 

There are a couple of people staying in the hotel rooms but we have this to ourselves. 

$12 a night with proper toilets and showers, a jacuzzi and a restaurant on site. 

 

A swimming pool for our use: 

It’s like camping at a Roman villa. 

And cats. They have  a small white dog and an army of cats. 

It was cool and overcast in the afternoon. As we retreated to GANNET2 the rain started. Not too hot, fans blowing, the three of us snug at home for the night.

Hunt The Package

 I am well aware that in the grand scheme of things, especially for a retiree with nothing but time on his hands and no appointments, a day or two more of standing still is nothing. But all this waiting is burning me up. Not that I show it. Publicly I accept my fate with good grace, but here in my diary page where one day I shall look back and remember, it is a slow grind to get through the day and not scream with frustration. I take my lead from my dog (my wife’s as bad as I am in this respect).

The 3000 watt Inverter which is paid for, is in Caacupé but the parcel delivery service is still sorting out the packages in the latest delivery to town and should be available for pick up Monday afternoon at two. That could mean we will spend Monday night somewhere other than here as we make a tourist journey at slow but constant speed toward Ciudad del Este on the Brazilian border.

We want to see a bit more of Paraguay by driving the southern edge along the mighty Paraná River, smaller than the Amazon of course but much the largest body of water touching four countries in the southern half of the continent. 

While Paraguay has no coastline it has traditionally controlled steamships’ access to the interior of this region. Nowadays trucks and roads do the heavy lifting but a hundred and fifty years ago the river was the best way to move freight from the interior to the coast and Paraguay controlled the river. I want to see it.  I know it’s just a river but it represents history. 

In 1864 about the time the US was wrapping up its rebellion Brazil and Argentina supported by a token 800 Uruguayan troops attacked Paraguay. It was a long involved story of politics gone wrong and a mad desire to fight in what is called the War of the Triple Alliance or the Paraguayan War . The weird thing was Paraguay went into it thinking they could win as they had a huge army and a navy that controlled the river and it was only after six years that they ended up getting soundly beaten and the country lost 350,000 people out of a population of 500,000. You read that right. After the war Paraguay was much smaller having lost territory everywhere and only 150,000 people remained alive, with women outnumbering men 4 to 1.  Just mind boggling. It’s worth reading about to get an idea of how mad people can become over territorial boundaries. 

Paraguay is an enigma. I won’t pile on all at once because it’s too much but the story of Jesuit missions and their subsequent expulsions is another extraordinary story. It just goes on and on in this little no account country. Look underneath the stereotype of a country known for nothing, and it’s full of magical realism. Anyway time for lunch. 

We went back to El Mundo the Swiss eatery and took Mark from the campground.  We spent $30 on a full service lunch, Layne had alcohol and I had dessert and we each had a plate of pork stroganoff with rosti (Swiss hash browns).

The rosti was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. It was the best rosti I’ve had, a food I describe as Swiss hash browns. 

Mark joined me in having dessert, a tiramisu. 

This is weird isn’t it, eating Swiss food in a small village no one’s ever heard of in the middle of Paraguay. There’s stuff going on in the world that defies explanation. 

Rusty enjoyed the cool tiled floor at the restaurant and I can’t wait to get him out of this heat. I think he’s ready to travel as he’s walking normally now.

Back at the campground we saw a new arrival, a motorcycle and tent which had arrived while we were gone. Turns out of course it was just another German youth let loose on South America. Alex it turns out speaks fluent English, worked for a multinational American company and then quit to ride around the world.

He’s tired of riding a motorcycle, it’s exhausting in the heat, tiresome looking for places to sleep and with a budget of $40 a day he has to sleep in flea pits or in his tent. He’s studying campers he meets on the way, figuring in his head that one day he’ll have a Land Cruiser with a tent on the roof. For now he rides a Yamaha Tenere and envies old farts in a van…

Layne has been studying the Lonely Planet guide to Paraguay. A country well off the tourist trail they say. 

For now we keep fingers crossed the package arrives.