Poking Around Paraguay: January-February 2016

Ottawa, March 5, 2016

As always, the contrasts created by modern travel can be jarring.  I started writing this post sitting in Thunder Bay airport a few days ago, with the outdoor temperature hovering around -20 degrees.  I’m writing about travelling through Paraguay a few weeks ago in temperatures above 40 degrees, and it seems hard to believe that then we were seriously concerned about heatstroke, while now I’m trying to avoid frostbite. 

Cordoba cathedral

Our bus ride from Santiago to Asuncion was very, very long.  We left Santiago early on January 15^th and arrived more or less 48 hours later.  It was a three-leg journey, through Mendoza and Cordoba, marked by constant squabbles and arguments with greedy Argentinian luggage handlers about how large a bribe they would receive for loading and unloading our bicycle boxes.  By the end of the trip, Terri had had quite enough of Argentinian maleteros!  We had a few hours off in Mendoza, which we spent in the bus station, but when we arrived in Cordoba early in the morning after a night bus, we left our bikes and baggage in a left luggage office and walked into the historic centre of town which was surprisingly pretty, with blocks of old colonial architecture, including the UNESCO-listed Manzana Jesuitica, the Jesuit block, with its striking architecture.

Monument to the disappeared, Cordoba

There were also reminders of the much more recent past, with memorial plaques to various local people who disappeared in the days of the military government and its Dirty War. 

Jesuit church, Cordoba

The second night on a bus went reasonably smoothly but ended early with our border crossing at 5 am, just outside Asuncion.  Paraguay counted as my 120^th country, and my first new country since Sweden (six months previously).  We got into the city at about 6:30 am and sat in the almost-empty bus station for a while catching our breath and using good free wi-fi (something almost entirely absent from the country of Argentina!) to find a place to stay.  We threw the bike boxes into the back of an ancient Ford pickup truck and drove to our chosen hospedaje, the very friendly Nande Po’a, which became our base of choice in the capital.  We spent a couple of nights in our big, comfortable room, and escaping from the blazing heat either in the air con in our room, or in the breezy, shaded courtyard of the hotel.

We poked around Asuncion a bit, less for historical interest and more for practical purposes.  The town had a tropical, slightly derelict feeling to it that reminded me most of Yangon.  The downtown historic core, as is so often the case in South American cities, has been allowed to decay while the centre of economic activity shifts to newer suburbs.  We walked around, buying groceries to cook up at the hotel, trying (successfully) to get a couple of cavities filled in my teeth and also trying (unsuccessfully) to get my malfunctioning watch fixed.  We also searched for a guidebook to the country, along with a decent map and a guide to birds; we failed utterly in all three quests, as it turns out that Paraguay is such a small tourism market for gringos that it’s not worth producing quality English-language guides and maps.  It was certainly annoying not having a bird book, although we did manage to figure out a few of the birds we saw.

We also had to decide what our cycling route was going to be.  My original idea had been to take a bus to Montevideo and then cycle north from there to Iguazu Falls and on to Asuncion.  Since our Carretera Austral trip had taken longer than anticipated, we had decided to start and finish in Asuncion, but we hadn’t picked out a route yet.  My inclination was to cycle south towards the Jesuit missions and then head upstream towards Ciudad del Este and Iguazu Falls.  Terri, however, wanted to get to Iguazu Falls as soon as possible, so we ended up riding east towards Ciudad del Este first, and then turning downstream towards the Jesuit missions and Encarnacion.  We were worried about heat and traffic, and the trip was about to show that both were things worth worrying about!

Tuesday, January 19th, 67 km:  Asuncion to km 57, near Caacupe

On Tuesday, January 19^th we were up by 6 am, breakfasting by 7 and on the road by 8 am, hoping to beat the intense heat.  It was a long ride through city traffic out towards the airport, and it was already 37 degrees by the time we got to the small commuter town of Luque.  We had chosen a route that avoided the main highway, Route 7, for much of the day.  We rode from Luque along a less-trafficked road to the lakeside tourist town of Aregua, although we barely caught a glimpse of the lake.  We stopped for cold drinks near the lake and sat in the shade, guzzling water, trying to rehydrate after the sweatbath we had been riding through.  As we approached the town of Yparacai, on Route 7, more and more signs announced new housing developments; the middle classes of Asuncion are either moving out of the city, or buying weekend homes.

When we turned onto Route 7, we emerged into a rushing torrent of trucks, buses and cars, some of the heaviest traffic I had ridden in in years.  Luckily there was almost always a paved shoulder for us to use; unluckily, the people who built the road put speedbumps on the shoulder to dissuade cars from driving on it.  This made for a lot of bumps and evasive manoeuvres on our part.  The terrain began to get hillier as we rode along, and Terri began to melt in the heat as we climbed more steeply.  We had one particular climb of 200 vertical metres in the hottest temperatures of the day (42 degrees on my cycling computer) that almost finished her off.  We looked for a hotel in the town of Caacupe and failed to find one, so we cycled on. 

End of the first day of baking in the heat

Just as Terri thought we would have to cycle another 25 km in the heat to find a place to stay, I spotted a sign for a swimming pool beside the road and we turned in after 67 km to find a lovely property run by a Paraguayan woman who was living and working in New Jersey.  We could camp at the back of the yard, swim to our hearts’ content and escape the non-stop roar of grinding truck engines.  It turned out to be a brilliant spot to stay, with lots of birds, a shady spot to cook, all the mangoes we could eat from the mango trees, and the delicious feeling of water on our skin to cool off.  We ate empanadas from the little stand next door, and went out at dusk to look for birds down by the little stream at the back of the property.  We tried out our new sleeping wraps; we had left our heavy sleeping bags behind in our bike boxes in Asuncion, and bought a few dollars’ worth of sheets and light terry cloth to keep ourselves warm at night instead.  It was actually a bit chilly at night; once the sun was down, the temperatures dropped right down to the low 20s.

Wednesday, January 20th, 73 km:  km 57 to Coronel Oviedo

Our second day began even earlier as we tried to get a jump on the heat.  We were cycling by 7:35, definitely a record for our trip, after some cold tea and coffee and some morning mangoes.  The thermometer stood at only 26 degrees as we set off, although it rapidly rose.  We had lots of smaller climbs as we made our way into Cordillera Province (the name is kind of a giveaway!), along with heavy traffic and the annoying speed bumps of yesterday.  After 18 km we stopped beside the road in a traditional Paraguayan chiperia for the national food obsession:  chipas.  These are a bit like chewy bagels or buns, made with a mixture of wheat and manioc flour and flavoured with cheese.  We ate, drank lots of cold drinks and then continued on our rolling route across the hills.  Eventually we dropped down to a long flat stretch through the lowlands after San Jose, with herds of cattle grazing beside the road and the heat assaulting the senses.  Around noon, at the 48 km mark we passed a fruit stand where we stopped and devoured an entire bag of oranges in one sitting.  We were beginning to appreciate the low prices for food in Paraguay after the higher prices in Argentina and Chile. 

Life-saving fruit stand on a hot day

At 2:30, just as the air was reaching its blast furnace maximum temperature, after 73 km we arrived in the bustling crossroads town of Coronel Oviedo, where we passed the second-grandest building we had seen in the entire country so far.  The most impressive had been the new Mormon Temple in Asuncion, but the Teleton building in Coronel Oviedo was also immaculate, a gleaming new building set in manicured grounds.  It seems as though the Teleton organization collects lots of overhead before passing on the funds it raises to its constituent charities!  We were keen to swim again, so when we spotted a hotel set in spacious grounds and featuring a swimming pool, we turned in.

Terri trying to cool off in a hot pool, Coronel Oviedo

We paid 120,000 guaranies (about US$ 21) for a big double room with air conditioning and breakfast, and again were grateful for the relatively low prices in Paraguay.  It was a great place to stay, and we loafed in the pool for a couple of hours (it was so warm in the sun that the pool itself was almost too hot, and Terri had to find a garden hose to cool herself) before having a nap and a then a takeout meal of roast chicken.  In town I met a Korean shopkeeper who had emigrated to Paraguay back in 1980 when Korea was still relatively poor and South America seemed to be the continent of opportunity.  We went out for a dusk stroll and were rewarded with dozens of types of birds, including hummingbirds, along with a breathtaking display of fireflies that set the garden alight.

Thursday, January 21, 50 km:  Coronel Oviedo to Caaguazu

Typical Paraguayan highway cycling

Our third day on the road was a relatively short one, at only 50 km, but between incandescent heat and lots of hills, it was a tough slog.  We were saved by a series of fruit stands that served us iced fruit salads and fresh fruit juice.  We stopped for lunch (more roast chicken and a pitcher of fresh fruit juice) and then knocked off early as we seemed to have a long hotel-less stretch in front of us.  In the big crossroads town of Caaguazu, we found another good, inexpensive hotel with a swimming pool, and spent the afternoon lounging in the pool and napping in the cool of the room.  We got up, watched the birds that came to the little oasis of the hotel garden, and then headed out for a great meal at a street kebab stand, a spot that attracted quite a big crowd of locals on their way home after work.  Again I was reminded of evenings in southeast Asia, with street food and crowds in the streets.

Friday, January 22nd, 72 km:  Caaguazu to Juan E. O'Leary

Our fourth day heading east started slowly, with headwinds and hills slowing us down.  I stopped on the way out of town to buy a baseball cap to protect my scalp from the intense sunlight.  We took some time off the bike and out of the 40-degree heat in JE Estigarribia, a town surrounded by extensive Mennonite farmsteads.  The landscape had changed from the small subsistence farms of the first few days to much bigger commercial operations, with huge fields of soybeans, corn and wheat festooned with signs from Monstanto, Dow Chemical and the other giants of the agro-industrial complex.  The headwinds died out, the landscape grew flatter and the population grew taller, blonder and more Germanic-sounding, with farmers named Jakob Braun and towns called Colonia Bergthal.  We flew along, keeping pace with each other, via stops for fruit salad and cold water, before arriving at Juan E. O’Leary, a town lacking in quality hotels or restaurants.  No swimming pool for us that evening, sadly, and it was a challenge finding a restaurant that was both open and had anything to serve.  Luckily, there was an exceptionally good ice cream parlour to drown our sorrows.

Saturday, January 23rd, 82 km:  Juan E. O'Leary to Ciudad del Este

Japanese immigrants have completely integrated into Yguazu

Our fifth day out of Asuncion, Saturday, January 23^rd, saw us arrive in bustling Ciudad del Este at last.  It was our longest day of cycling so far in Paraguay (81 km) but also had the best scenery at the end of the day.  Terri seemed a bit more acclimatized to the fierce heat, and we made quite good time along the roaring highway.  Terri led the way on downhills and on flat sections, and kept the gap close on uphills.  The day’s culinary specialty was melon, eaten at a roadside stall, and produced at a Japanese-settled area just down the road in Yguazu.  We stopped in for snacks in Yguazu, noting lots of Japanese family names on signs (like the Churrasqueria Shirosawa), and then embarked on the last busy stretch into Ciudad del Este, the second-largest city in Paraguay and a relatively recent creation, springing up since the creation of the immense Itaipu hydroelectric dam in the 1960s.  We stopped for lunch at a very friendly little restaurant and car wash, where the friendly proprietress took an instant liking to us and decided to fatten us up.  Not far from the border crossing into Brazil, we turned south towards the Monday waterfalls and found a pleasant but quite expensive hotel, the Salzburgo, to stay. 

Monday Falls, near Ciudad del Este

We splashed around in the swimming pool for a while before I dragged Terri out to go sightseeing.  Monday Falls turned out to be very impressive indeed, with chocolate-coloured water thundering over a precipice at a great rate.  The power in the water was awe-inspiring.

Monday Falls

We chatted with several locals who were very welcoming; Paraguay is not overflowing with gringo tourists, and so local people were genuinely curious about our impressions of their country, and very welcoming.  The forests around the falls are some of the scattered remnants of what was once the Atlantic rainforest, and have been maintained as a tiny park, full of birds, flowers and butterflies.  Terri and I wandered around looking for birds, and then sat at a little restaurant having a beer and an empanada while watching the waterfalls. 

Monday Falls

Sunday, January 24th, 31 km:  Ciudad del Este to Foz do Iguacu (Brazil)

The view from the Brazilian side

Early the next morning we rumbled across the bridge into Brazil, my 121^st country.  The usual frenetic cross-border shopping trade was at a low point at 7:40 am, and we rolled into Brazil with minimal delay.  Foz do Iguacu, the Brazilian city on the other side, was a modern, wealthy-looking city with well laid-out streets and transport, a contrast to the chaos and grittiness in Ciudad del Este.  We cycled 28 kilometres from Hotel Salzburgo, through the sprawling suburbs of Foz do Iguacu and out into the countryside beyond.  We had booked a hotel on Booking.com that looked improbably upmarket, but it turned out to be the right place.  After a bit of messing around and waiting for our room to be ready, we dumped our luggage and rode our bikes the 2 km to the entrance to Iguazu Falls. 

Coatis swarm a stolen bag of potato chips

Butterfly at Iguazu Falls

Iguazu Falls is one of the great natural wonders of South America, and on this Sunday morning it seemed as though half of the populations of Argentina and Brazil were there at the same time.  It took 20 minutes to get through the huge ticket queue, and then a long bus ride to get to the falls themselves.  Once we were off the bus, though, it was all worth it.  We spent a couple of hours wandering around, taking photos and staring out across at the immense number of individual falls that cut across the width of the river.  Black vultures soared in huge numbers over the falls, catching the updrafts, and bands of marauding coatis, animals rather like raccoons, prowled around trying to steal any plastic bags that tourists might be holding and rooting through snack bars and trash cans in search of food.

Brazilian side of the Devil's Throat

The Brazilian side of the falls is the place to get an overview of the entire vast spread of the falls, and we certainly did just that.  We were also blown away by the colourful butterflies and birds in the jungle; Iguazu Falls is in a national park that preserves a fair-sized chunk of Atlantic rainforest, and even has (somewhere in the back corners of the park) jaguars.  We enjoyed the breathtaking, soaking experience of gazing out at Devil’s Throat, the very centre of the falls, and then caught the bus back to the entrance in order to visit the Bird Park.

Butterfly at Iguazu Falls

We didn’t know what sort of experience the Bird Park would provide, but we lined up in the heat, paid our admission and went inside.  We were late in the day and concerned that they would close on us, but we needn’t have worried, as they only close the admission at 5, allowing people already inside to stay until 7 pm.  We wandered around for two and a half hours open-mouthed with amazement.  The park is very professionally run and does a lot of rehabilitation of birds captured from the illegal pet trade, as well as captive breeding of rare species.

Butterfly at the Bird Park

Toucan at the Bird Park

They concentrate on Brazilian birds, although they have birds from all over the world.  Their parrots and parakeets and macaws were captivating, as were their toucans.  The park has a number of enclosures inside which the birds roam and fly freely, and Terri and I spent a long time sitting quietly while toucans and curassows crept right up to us to investigate us.  One huge highlight was the butterfly and hummingbird enclosure, full of whirring hummingbirds and lazily flapping colourful butterflies.  We were the last people out of the park, and our heads were whirring with sensory overload as we cycled back to the hotel, had a swim and dined in the buffet dining room.  My one day in Brazil left me eager to see much more of this huge and diverse country; it will have to be next time!

Terri meets a toucan

Monday, January 25th, 18 km:  Foz do Iguacu (Brazil) to Puerto Iguazu (Argentina)

Me wearing a butterfly on the Argentinian side

Early the next morning we cycled partway back towards downtown Foz before turning south across a bridge into Argentina.  It was possibly the easiest crossing into or out of Argentina we had yet had, and we were quickly in Puerto Iguazu, the scruffy little town on the Argentinian side.  Compared to Foz do Iguacu, this side seemed much poorer and less planned, and we had great difficulty in finding our cheap accommodation, as there were no street signs to be found.  Eventually, down a muddy anonymous track, we found our little homestay, dropped off our gear and set off on foot for the bus to the park. 

Argentinian side of the Devil's Throat

The Argentinian side of the falls was a very different experience to the Brazilian side.  There were far fewer tourists, and the walking trails were more extensive and felt much wilder.  We walked for a few hours, covering all the major trails and getting very up close and personal with the individual cataracts.  We started off with a very slow train trip to the furthest part of the park.

River turtle at Iguazu Falls

We absorbed the overwhelming power of the Argentinian view of the Devil’s Throat, then walked through the jungle track (instead of taking the little train again) back to where the upper and lower circuits cut through the jungle over and beside some of the hundreds of individual falls.  Again the jungle was full of coatis, butterflies and birds, and we got in lots of walking and oodles of wildlife.  One of the most impressive species were the great dusky swifts who nest on the cliffs behind the thundering waterfalls.

Jay

Partway through the afternoon the sky turned orange with dust as winds kicked up dramatically and looked almost as though a tornado was imminent.  Fifteen minutes later the dust storm was gone, having given us nothing more than dramatic light over the falls.  (We heard later that the same storm hit the city of Encarnacion and did quite a lot of damage; we were lucky to get off so lightly.)  We caught the bus back, having decided that we didn’t want to pay an extra 550 pesos (US$ 37) for a full moon experience over the falls.  We bought some juicy Argentinian steaks, some good veggies and some good red wine and cooked up a small feast back at the hospedaje.

Terri having a rave moment at the falls

The next day we had a much-appreciated day off from sightseeing and from cycling.  We had originally planned to go back to the falls for another day of hiking, but we realized that we had covered almost every bit of possible trail, and the weather forecast was far from encouraging.  In fact a torrential downpour came down for much of the day, so we felt clever for not having gone out hiking.  It was good for the mind and body to spend a day reading, juggling, doing laundry, eating and playing guitar.

Wednesday, January 27th, 74 km:  Puerto Iguazu (Argentina) to Tavapy

Wednesday, January 27^th saw us retracing our steps back to Ciudad del Este, as our original plan, to cycle through Missiones province on the Argentinian side of the river, foundered on the realization that much of the road had the same traffic as in Paraguay but without the luxury of a paved shoulder.  Some of the cycling blogs we read made it sound quite nerve-wracking and perilous, so we decided to stick with the Paraguayan devil we knew.  It took surprisingly little time to cross back into Brazil and then across into Paraguay; I wish all South American border crossings were so quick and easy!  We rode out of Ciudad del Este.  The traffic was insane; we were lucky to have ridden the other way early on a Sunday.  Now every Brazilian and his car were heading across the bridge in search of cross-border shopping opportunities.  We crawled out of town back to the friendly Minga restaurant in Minga Guazu (on the south side of the road, between km 19 and 20 if you’re counting from Ciudad del Este, or between km 307 and 308 if you’re counting from Asuncion) where we had lunched a few days previously.  Erica, the owner, was glad to see us and fed us sumptuously again like long-lost family.  We eventually tore ourselves away and backtracked further to the highway junction where Route 6 turns south towards Encarnacion. 

The traffic lessened noticeably as we moved onto Routh 6, although it was still a busy road.  We ground out another 24 km, making 74 for the day, before we found a place to stay.  We looked at a promising-looking swimming pool park beside the road for camping, but it was, sadly, no longer in operation.  In the tiny settlement of Tavapy, we found a small hotel, the Emi, and downed a couple of ice-cold beers to cool off (in the absence of a swimming pool).  It was much cooler than on previous days, thanks to the rains and overcast skies, but it was still 36 degrees by 1 pm and pretty humid.  We set out that evening to see if the music we could here in the distance was some sort of carnival celebrations, but nothing was going on, so we retired to the hotel for an early night.

Thursday, January 28th, 87 km:  Tavapy to Naranjito

Meeting Nestor and Ariel beside the road

From this point on, our ride passed through endless big commercial farms, through a changing quilt of ethnic and religious affiliations:  Mennonites, Germans, Brazilians and Japanese all featured.  Our second day, at 87 km the longest ride we did in Paraguay, saw us leaving fashionably late at 8:15.  Not long after rolling out of town, we were passed by a couple of local mountain bikers in spandex heading back from a training ride.  We ended up having a long conversation with them beside the road, and Ariel and Nestor recorded a short interview with me beside the road (in Spanish) that they posted on Facebook.  Ariel is a serious competitive rider, off to the world championships in Canada in August.  As was so often the case in Paraguay, they were curious about what we thought about Paraguay and Paraguayans.  I mentioned the heat and the crazy traffic, but also the hospitality and friendliness of the people we had met.  After we got rolling again, we seemed to ride forever through the sprawling town of Santa Rita.  We had the one and only attempted tourist ripoff of the Paraguayan trip, as a juice stand wanted to charge us four times the usual price for fruit juice.  We declined and cycled further to find cold drinks at a gas station.  We continued to roll past big soybean fields and signs for Syngenta, Cargill and Monsanto.  After 45 km we found an isolated restaurant which served an expensive but huge all-you-can-eat feast over which we lingered, using internet and escaping the heat.  (Of course “expensive” is all relative; if I were paying US$ 7 for an all-you-can-eat lunch in most other countries, I’d be overjoyed!)

After lunch we undulated over increasing hills, as we got up to an eventual altitude of 450 metres above sea level.  We had to ride further than we had anticipated looking for a hotel, and when we got to the town of Naranjito it wasn’t at first obvious that there would be a place to stay.  Eventually we spotted a hotel tucked behind a big churrasco restaurant and settled in for a well-earned cold beer.  The couple running the restaurant and hotel were both Brazilians, and everyone in town seemed to be Brazilian, to the point that all the TV channels were in Portuguese and all the shops in town sported posters of Brazilian soccer teams.  We chowed down on some delicious meat in the restaurant that evening, discussing what to do when our cycling was over.

Friday, January 29th, 77 km:  Naranjito to km 66

Arno Sommerfeld, quality leader in a Mennonite district

We set off the next morning breakfastless, stopping in at a small shop after 7 km to have some coffee, tea, bread, jam and in a small grocery shop.  We had a long discussion with the owner and her daughter.  It was another day of lots of hard work cycling without much to look at.  I found myself longing for the wonderful natural setting of the Carretera Austral; this was too much cycling to survive rather than cycling for the joy of it.  The temperature soared up to 41 degrees again, and we ended up staying the night in a small, isolated hospedaje in the middle of nowhere after a series of steep hills.  There was no restaurant around, but the lady who ran the hospedaje offered us some of the leftovers from her lunch and between that and a supper of macaroni and cheese, we staved off starvation.  The surroundings were full of interesting birds, including hummingbirds and a crowd of noisy parakeets, and it was pleasant to sit out in the back yard playing tennis and juggling and watching nature, including an immense toad and a big, alarming looking tarantula.

Saturday, January 30th, 64 km:  km 66 to the Country Hotel (km 27), via sidetrip to Jesus de Tavarangue

I'm a little mate gourd, short and stout

We were now only 66 km from Encarnacion, but the main attraction of this leg of the trip, visiting the old Jesuit missions of the area, was coming up, so we planned on taking two days to get to Encarnacion.  We started the day with some tea, coffee and oatmeal cooked out in the garden, and were underway by 8 am.  We rolled easily to Bella Vista, the first of three towns known collectively as Las Colonias Unidas, the wealthiest communities in the country.  We had mid-morning snacks at a bakery next to the giant mate gourd that marked the fact that Bella Vista produces much of the country’s yerba mate.  The town was full of German last names and blond hair and blue eyes.  We continued cycling through Obligado and Hohenau and by 11:30 we had reached the crossroads leading towards Jesus de Tavarangue.  It was a tremendous relief to turn onto the road and suddenly be almost alone on the pavement, with only a handful of cars heading out towards the ruins.  We rode side by side, admiring the views and chatting, something we had barely done since arriving in Paraguay.  Fields of yerba mate lined the road and we climbed steadily up to the village of Jesus.

Ruins of Jesus

Jesus ruins

It had been our plan to spend the night in Jesus, but there were no places to stay that we could find, so we decided to visit the ruins and then return to the highway.  I loved the ruins, set atmospherically on the edge of town.  The Jesuits had established a series of “reductions”, or villages set around a church, in the area in the late 1600s and early 1700s.  By the standards of the time, the Jesuits were enlightened rulers, helping teach the Guarani villagers skills and how to survive in the colonial economy.  They were eventually evicted by the Spanish crown in the 1760s, either because they had become too powerful and rich, or because the Spanish (and the Portuguese across the border in Brazil) were not interested in having educated, skilled villagers who were harder to exploit and force into near slavery.

The Jesuits looking military in their coat of arms

The ruins show the epic scale of the Jesuit ambition, with a huge church (that, like medieval cathedrals, didn’t ever get completed), a big school, workshops and the foundations of the houses built for the villagers.  The views over the neigbouring hills were pretty, and we sat behind the church reflecting on the changing fortunes of history.

Terri contemplating Jesus

Pretty woodpecker at Jesus

On the ride back to the main road, we realized how much we had climbed going the other way, as we coasted downhill almost the entire way.  In Trinidad we looked at places to stay and found them severely wanting, so we again decided not to sleep there.  The ruins were amazing, even bigger in scale than Jesus and more complete.  The tropical heat and red brick ruins made me think of Southeast Asian ruins like Ayutthaya and Bagan.  Parakeets flittered around from palm tree to palm tree, and we were pleased to see a few burrowing owls sitting on walls and in the grass.  There was 18^th century graffiti in the ruins of the church, along with gravestones of long-dead missionaries.  I found it a moving place to wander around.

Trinidad Jesuit ruins

Burrowing owl at Trinidad

We rode away from Trinidad around 5 pm, stopped for a fruit break to try to rehydrate and then pushed onwards, aiming for a hotel we had heard about, the Tyrolia.  We heard from a passing local guy on a racing bike that the Tyrolia sat atop a steep hill, news which did not please Terri.  Luckily we soon passed a sign for the Country Hotel and turned in to have a look.  They wanted a lot of money for a room, but we could camp in the garden for a very reasonable 50,000 guaranies (about US$ 8).  The place is owned by a German guy, Wolfgang, who has lived in Paraguay for 30 years.  We ate lots of yummy food, drank home-made beer, bought honey and German-style bread and generally spent much of the money we had saved on accommodation.

Camping under shelter at the Country Hotel

It was interesting to talk to Wolfgang and hear how the area has changed over the past 15 years, with paved roads, big agro-industrial farms and clearcutting replacing dirt tracks, tiny subsistence farms and big tracts of Atlantic rainforest.  We swam in the pool, put up our tent under a thatched roof and slept well, despite the torrential downpour that lasted much of the night.

Sunday, January 31st, 25 km:  Country Hotel to Encarnacion

Our last day of cycling in Paraguay, January 31^st, was a short one, as we only had 25 km separating the Country Hotel from downtown Encarnacion.  We rolled along through relatively light traffic into the city, then combed the streets looking for a hotel.  Our map was hopelessly inaccurate, but we eventually found a decent hotel with an indoor pool and quiet rooms.  We went out for a celebratory lunch at a churrasco restaurant, bought our bus tickets for the next day to Asuncion, had a long swim, then went out in search of sushi.  It took forever to find the Hiroshima, but it was worth it.  We got takeout sushi and brought it back to the hotel along with a bottle of Argentinian bubbly to mark the end of two and a half months of riding in South America.

Running the bikes through the car wash, Encarnacion

The next day saw us bring our bicycles, which were covered in the fine red dust of Paraguay, to a car wash to be properly washed before loading them on the bus.  The bus ride to Asuncion was long but fairly comfortable, and we spent part of it talking to Colleen, an American Peace Corps volunteer on her way to welcome a new group of volunteers.  We rode from the Asuncion bus station back to Nande Po’a to find that our room seemed to have been given away despite having made a reservation.  Luckily by the time we started to put up our tent in the courtyard, the manager realized that he did have a room for us and we slept indoors.

A day of administration in Asuncion saw me get the finishing touches put on my dental work (two cavities filled for US$80, a lot cheaper than in Canada, by a very professional outfit) and get my watch fixed properly, while Terri visited the beautician to repair some of the ravages of life on the road.  And then, on February 3^rd, we took a pickup truck through a spectacular rainstorm and the rapidly flooding streets of the capital back to the bus station to catch a bus to Buenos Aires, where we had decided to spend the last 10 days of our trip. 

Paraguay was an interesting country to visit, not least because I knew so little about it before visiting. It’s definitely poorer than either Chile or Argentina, but it seems to be riding the agricultural commodity boom to greater prosperity, and it is one of the friendliest countries I’ve been to outside of Central Asia.  There was never any undercurrent of desperate poverty or social unrest, and I really enjoyed meeting the people along the road who were genuinely curious about us and what we were doing.  Unlike, say, Chile, we met no other bike tourists, although local people said they did see cyclists on a regular basis.  The cycling was pretty grim, to be honest:  the incessant heavy traffic wears on the senses and makes cycling not much fun, while the heat is pretty fierce.  I wish we had had the time to ride up into the wilder parts of the country like the Gran Chaco.  We decided not to rent a car and visit national parks, as we weren’t sure how much real wilderness and jungle remains to be found in the country, and how accessible it is.  What we did really enjoy was the good, inexpensive food and accommodation to be found, with great quality fruit and meat and quality hotels for less than US$20.  I’m glad we visited, although perhaps cycling is not the ideal way to experience the country.