After I
decided I was going to try heading through Paraguay, I did some research and
got the address for the Paraguay consulate in Santa Cruz. An extened searcg if the city revealed the
office on the first floor of an apartment building. The security guard didn´t even know it was
there- maybe I should have taken this as a sign? Luckily the ladies in the ladies in the
office were amazingly helpful, going so far as to write a letter for me in
Spanish to the Consulor General to explain why I didn´t have a ticket yet to
exit the country once I got in (it is almost impossible to buy bus tickets
ahead of time in much of South America).
I rounded up some passport photos and photocopies of my credit card and
paid the $65 fee and then five hours later, I was officially allowed to enter
Paraguay for up to 90 days. Too bad the
rest of the trip to Asuncion wasn´t that easy.
One of the
requirements of the visa application was that I purchase a ticket to enter the
country ahead of time, so at the Santa Cruz station I did some due diligence
and checked around a few ticket offices before purchasing. I knew from research online that one does not
always get what is promised when paying for these buses so I thought I was
being pretty careful. The trip runs at
about 24 hours total, so it is no small commitment to choose a company. I settled on Yacyreta, which was recommended
in the Lonely Planet guide book and appeared to have a pretty clean office and
friendly staff. The ticket seller
assured me that they had television, air conditioning and reclining seats as
well as three meals included. I paid 380
Bolivianos and was pretty pleased with myself.
The evening
of departure, I got there early and waited in front of the office. Rather abruptly with about 20 minutes to go
before departure, the man I bought the ticket from, hustles me through the
hallway toward the departure door and we walk past half a dozen nice looking
coaches. He drops my bag in front of the
smallest bus at the end of the row and quickly walks off. I look up at my new home for the next 24
hours and realize I may have just been hustled.
They didn´t mention it at purchase, but when the various companies don´t
have enough passengers to fill several buses, they just send the cheapest one. Yacyreta may have had a very nice bus for all
I know, but they weren´t going bother sending it for five or ten people. I was shuffled onto a bus run by Rio Paraguay
with no air conditioning, tv and a seat that barely reclined. With resignation, I bordered the piece of
crap and resigned myself to an unconfortable trip, yet again. Supper was passable with cold chicken and
rice and after a long night, breakfast consisted of four small cookies and a
juice box. By mid-day we were crossing
the Chaco, a vast empty space in the north of Paraguay that totally reminded me
of the outback of Western Australia- nothing but bare dirt and scrubby dry
brush as far as the eye could see. Somewhere
near the Tropic of Capricorn, the dry heat drove the temperature upwards of 42
degress; it was at about this time that the bus broke down. Awesome.
With the nearest town hundreds of kilometers away, I chose not to think
about the potential consequences and decided to have a nap instead. The travel gods must have took pity on us as
the bus roared back to life about an hour and a half later. We finally rolled into Asuncion at 7pm and I
caught a cab to my hostel and slept for almost a full day. I must have needed it after my little bus
adventure.
Other than
a few good pubs and bars, there wasn´t much to do in th Paraguayan capital so
after a night of dancing with some fellow travellers from the hostel, I moved
on to Encarnacion, which was near some Jesuit ruins listed as a UNESCO world
heritage site. I meant to check the
place out in the morning but I slept in and the afternoon was way too hot for
me. The weather had reached the low 40s
every day I was in Paraguay. Tired of
the crazy heat, I decided to just head for the more temperate climes of
Argentina. Bolivia had been too cold,
Paraguay too hot, so hopefully Argentina would be just right. I splurged for a private room with air
conditioning in Ciudad del Este and stayed for two nights. The town shares a border with both Brazil and
Argentina so it was a really interesting mixture of cultures. It also is home to the second largest dam in
the world in terms of energy production, second only to the Three Gorges
project in China. After some public
transit confusion I took a cab to see the big man-made behemoth that was the
Itaipu Dam. Started in the 70´s, it was
pretty controversial as it flooded a huge swath of pristine wilderness,
including a pretty spectacular waterfall. The upside being that it provides electricity
to almost all of Paraguay and a good percentage of Brazil as well.
I left the
hot and dusty and disorganized world of Paraguay by catching a small boat
across the river to Puerto Iguazu in Argentina; a town famous mainly for the
insanely breathtaking waterfalls there.
But more on that next time!!!
