Paraguay

27/08/2016: We arrived in Bolivia from Paraguay by plane yesterday and it's like we're in a different country. Given all the forms we had to fill out and the number of times we showed our passports at the airport, I’d guess we might actually be in a different country. After the state of disrepair we found all the cities we visited in Paraguay in (only four, but there aren't that many more), what we saw on the walk we took around the main square in Santa Cruz De la Sierra last night was a complete surprise. There were no dangerously large holes in the ground, there were benches under the trees in the square, with people sitting on them (the benches not the trees). The grass wasn't crispy and yellow and we even passed by a temporary stage behind the cathedral which looked like it was about to host a Miss Bolivia contest: there was a giant sparkly globe on the stage, there were judges tables set out with pink table cloths and champagne glasses, and I think I saw Donald Trump sitting at one of those tables struggling to pour himself a glass of champagne with his tiny hands, while he slobbered expectantly like a child promised a trip to the sweet shop. If only Trump could content himself with sexually harassing a pack of wine gums. Having said that, he may well have. (Side note, on the topic of sweeties, we tried to buy tic-tacs on our way home, yet they had sold out everywhere). However, as this city is the fastest growing, most populous, and has the highest foreign investment in the country, I imagine Santa Cruz de la Sierra may not be representative of Bolivia, which is not known for its riches.

Back when we were in rainy Argentina, in Puerto Iguazú, we found flights from Asunción in Paraguay to here for a tenth of the normal price. Buying them meant we'd have to speed up our jaunt through Paraguay and reduce it to a week, but losing time there would be compensated by visiting a country which hadn't previously been on our shopping list and so we decided it was a good choice. We took a bus from Iguazú to Posadas, following the border west and passing through towns called El Dorado (like the TV show) and Puerto Rico (like the board game). We arrived in Posadas (Argentina) at 20:00 and still needed to cross the bridge and border into Encarnación (Paraguay), so we waited at the platform indicated to us by the twenty people we asked (always good to be sure), and watched in vain hopefulness as bus after bus pulled into every platform but ours. After almost two hours of waiting, we learned that the drivers of the previous buses to Encarnación had just not bothered to come to the terminal. There were some more people in our situation; an old woman said she'd been waiting all afternoon. We finally got on a bus at 22:00 and the chubby, useless, teenager driving it informed us in a snootily that, although he'd wait for us at the Argentinian border while we got our exit stamps from his country, at the Paraguayan border he wouldn't repeat the favour. I protested that as this was the last bus -and we’d missed the others thanks to his fellow bus driver's failure to drive their buses to bus stops- and that the walk into town was too long for lazies with big bags, we needed him to wait for us, he puffed out his porky cheeks and told me there was another bus after this one in the tone of a bus driver lying to a foreigner. As it turned out, when we got to the Paraguayan border, there were only three people who needed their passports stamped, so Porky grunted (through his Mars bar) that if we ran, he might wait. Might wait. Might. Dick.

With my 14-kilos of extra weight (backpack: all the pizza still hasn’t caught up with me) and my expert running skills, it wasn't long before, thanks to a speed bump I failed to see, I began to stumble, wobble, teeter and totter, before finally hurling myself into the open arms of the ground. I landed on my back (fortunately, as the backpack -and my phone- absorbed most of the impact), bruising my knee, and my pride. The bus driver; wonderful, altruistic cockwomble that he so obviously was, couldn't drive off and leave a theatrically limping duck and her worried Dutch (irlandés/holandés, meh) companion, so we sauntered (struggled) back to the bus, and rode it exultantly to the bus station.

The main attraction in and around Encarnación are the nearby ruins of a Jesuit mission. A Jesuit mission, I learned, is when Jesuits (a kind of monk) go on a mission from Europe to another country and teach the non-believers to be believers (in god), and give them a house to live in if they comply, or a fast-track ticket to the afterlife if they don't comply, where the houses are made of fire and all the kitchenware is from Argos. It's all a bit like a 17th Century Bible camp, only where the entire population is forced to go, against their will, despite the fact they are nomadic peoples not used to living in small, static communities, already have their own religion which is working on for them and (worst of all) there is no End of Summer Show put on by the councillors. We visited the ruins, half an hour away by bus, and said a prayer in one of the many churches in the tiny ruined village that Paraguayan intercity buses did not smell as bad as the local buses.

That evening we took a walk along the riverside-beach-riviera-complex (a row of restaurants on a boardwalk) and decided that, although much more could be done to exploit the city (a good cleaning and repaving would be a start), we were definitely not seeing Encarnación at its best, although low season means prices are lower #cheapduck2016ishappy.

Summer Camp was cool but some
guy in Spain owns my soul now.

• "Paraguay is nice, but a bit shit." -P. M. O'Gairmleadhaigh.

The next day we took a bus to Villarrica (it didn't smell of pee, thank you Summer Camp God), along route 8. If route 8 is the 8th most important/biggest/newest road in Paraguay, you should probably avoid routes 9 through 20. At certain points on the map the road disappears, and at these points an extremely bumpy dirt track takes the place of the road and links it to the next section, which is fine unless you're onboard and trying to eat your soup (or in our case quiche and salad with an Italian dressing, soup on a bus is a douchebag’s game). In Villarrica we finally got to see the giant guinea pigs (capybaras) we’d been on the lookout for since we got to South America. It was also the place where both of our tablets broke, in the space of two days: Pól's from a technical fault (so not his fault) and mine because it jumped from my bag onto the floor (so not my fault) and the next day, in Asunción, my phone took it's last breath and went to Motorola heaven (I blame you, Porky).

I think we'll always remember Paraguay for the technical difficulties we suffered while we were there, as well the social difficulties we saw. There were children running round the capital city without shoes, shanty towns next to senate buildings, whole families piled onto one motorcycle (not a shoe or a helmet between them) and the general dilapidation you might expect from one of South America's poorest countries. However, the people were friendly and accommodating of our condition (vegetarianism) and, although we didn't really get chatting with any Paraguayans, I think that was more due to our shy and awkwardness than anything else.

Bolivia is also one of the lowest on the list of well-off countries in South America, so without wanting to sound like a presenter on DuckTravel2016 : Poverty Special, I'm curious to see more of the country. We hope to visit Sucre, the Salt Flats at Uyuni, the mines at Potosi, and the phone shop around the corner (in the hope they can fix my iPad screen).*

*(One month later). The people in the shop put a new screen on the iPad, took my 60€, then waited until I was a safe distance away and in another city before activating the remote fuck-you device they’d installed in its belly which scrambled the touchscreen. I can't go on Facebook now for fear of accidentally liking dumb pictures of cats wearing hats. #idontlikethestupidmememyipadmademedoit