Our week in Paraguay ended ages ago and since then we've been to Argentina and Uruguay. Before getting to adventures in the latter two countries, it is time to tell you about our adventures in Paraguay. (On a side note, we will be telling them for the second time because Blogger kindly deleted the text in our ready-written draft. Yay.)
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| Sanni got to try on the costume of one dancer |
We've been asked multiple times both before, after and even during our stay in Paraguay, why on Earth we'd want to go to that country, what there is to see. The answer was exactly the same - we wanted to go because so many people were questioning our choice and because we didn't know anything about the country. Looking back it was one of the best weeks so far - we got to see samba carneval in Encarnación, visited briefly the capital and the president's palace and spent time in the middle of nowhere on a farm.
During our stay in Foz do Iguaçu we visited the neighbouring city across the border, just to have a look at the place without our huge backpacks. Being the badasses we are, of course we had to cross the bridge on the no man's land by foot. Because robberies happen on a daily basis, Ponte da Amizade, the Friendship Bridge, is told to be one of the most dangerous ones in South America, but we survived without any problems. Ciudad del Este is one huge shopping center for (rich) Brasilians. We thought the whole country would look like the first few blocks of the town - dirty, unorganised, full of people shoveling perfumes and hats on your face.
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| Miss Paraguay |
On the next day, when our trip in Paraguay actually began, we noticed how wrong we were! Right after getting out of the shopping area in CDE, the parks got greener, streets less crowded and people nicer. Our first stop was carneval in Encarnación. They celebrate their own carneval each year on three weekends in the beginning of February. We were standing in the queue for hours to get tickets to the opening ceremony, only to find out that you need your passport to purchase tickets. That meant no opening for us, but luckily we got tickets for the next day and got to see wiggling butts, (almost) bare breasts and highest of high heels. They made samba look so easy!
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| Wiggling butts! |
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| Body painting is the new black |
Originally we were going to meet Marcelo, a friend of a friend in Paraguay and visit him near Asunción. In Foz we had the feeling we wouldn't have enough time for that, so we kindly told him that we couldn't visit him. Then he surprised us by inviting us to Chaco, the northern wilderness of Paraguay. Decicions were made in 15 seconds and it was settled, we would make time to go there with him.
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| Segundo and Servelion checking the muddy roads |
We left Encarnacion on Sunday and early on Monday morning Marcelo, Leo (the newest addition to Marcelo's team of workers) and the two of us hopped in his truck and headed north. We would visit his two farms, spend a few days in the other farm and see some cows get vaccinated. What we knew was that it would be no 5-star hotel, but what caught us by surprise was the fact that on the farm there would be no electricity and no running water.
We were driving happily, chatting and napping, when we noticed some police officers standing on the Ruta Transchaco. They stopped us and wanted to check Marcelos driving licence. The officer glanced at us on the back seat and out of the blue asked to see our passports. We don't carry them around with us, so we gave him photocopies instead. He said they weren't enough and demanded to see the real passports or at least a legal, stamped copy. We started panicking and he began to get sour but Marcelo soothed the situation by shaking his hand and offering a couple of guaranís for the police to be able to buy some beer. Of course we had read about situations when bribing would be needed, but I hadn't even imagined that we'd actually have to bribe the police at some point during the trip!
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| So how much space does EU want every cow to have? |
When we got closer to the farm, the roads started to get worse and worse. At some point we met a bunch of cowboys, who (as we got to know) were people working on Marcelo's farms and on the neighbouring estates. They helped us cross the parts where grass was growing on eye level, where water seemed to be pooling knee deep and where mud had taken over the sandy road. Eventually we got closer to the farm than was expected and had to walk only about ten minutes.
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| Hello MTV and welcome to my crib! |
The farm was simple - a few buildings with wide holes between the wall boards and partly no doors and floor. We spent our days with (or next to? around?) workers from Marcelo's farms. Communicating with them wasn't too easy. They spoke Guaraní, the second official language of Paraguay, and didn't understand our broken Spanish. They seemed both confused and delighted to meet us - they don't get that many visitors, especially foreign women.
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| The boys were kind enough to slaughter one of the goats for us. Since they don't have a fridge, they go hunting and eat rice and fresh meat every day. |
Our host was a 27-year-old man named Segundo. He lived alone on the farm taking care of the surroundings, cows and goats. He was really shy but hospitable nevertheless and let us sleep in his bed (a lumpy wooden bed and thin matress, the best bed on the farm). The story behind his name was what caught us: being the second child of the family, his parents named him Segundo, The Second. Curiously enough his big brother isn't Primero, the First, but he is named after a cat from a Paraguayan children's song.
The dark nights were lighted by stars and glowworms and days were hot. Working in fourty degrees, I have no idea how the men could do that day after day. I guess at some point you get used to that. At least the heat wasn't as suffocating as it was on the coast because the breeze and the air were drier. Also different from the coast towns was the amount of weird animals we saw! There were dozens of exquisite birds, for example two birds that couldn't fly, one like an emu and another like a kiwi. The area was supposed to be filled with jaguars, tapir, maras and armadillos, tatú bolitos, but we only saw one armadillo hanging on the wall. I also saw a huge snake that the locals call cobra falso de agua - it's not related to a cobra but it acts in the same way.
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| Vaccination in process. Panicking cows piled on top of each other. |
We were told we could go and help the workers in herding the cows on horses. Sadly for me, luckily for Anneli they didn't have enough horses. We did our best when the cows were safely inside the fences, though. The vaccinating seemed brutal for us - too many cows got packed in a tiny space, some of them stood on top of the others and then the people just shot the vaccination somewhere they could reach. But I guess that's how you do it, taking the surroundings and equipment into account.
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| Totally helping! |
As Finns we felt some kind of a connection between the two nations. Both countries are small in size, there are not too many inhabitants and even the capital cities are equally populated. In both countries south is more densely populated and north is either dry or cold wilderness.
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| The other one too! |
Also the history got into us. In the end of 19th century Paraguay got into war with the three surrounding nations, War of the Triple Alliance. Fighting simultaneously on three frontiers against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, Paraguay lost lots of land and 70% of its population, according to Wikipedia even 90% of the male population of the country. According to locals all of this happened because of one president, who had studied in Europe and was a huge fan of Napoleon. After the war the official statement of the (new, we'd guess) president was to think of the country and not love, make babies with anybody and repopulate the country. Not even 60 years later in the 1930's Paraguay went into war with Bolivia and even though it was declared as winner, land and people were again lost.
Now we are in Buenos Aires, have seen some tango, eaten delicious food (Argentinean ice cream is really good!), sat in cozy cafés, spent time with nice guys we met on the street (some might call them street rats) and visited Uruguay. Soon we will continue westwards to Mendoza. Many people have suggested that we go down south to see glaciers and beautiful nature of Patagonia. We were actually planning on doing so, but because of lack of time and money and since Anneli (being sick at the moment) couldn't go hiking, we decided to skip Patagonia and leave glaciers and penguins for the next time.