Seeing as I was in the area I decided to give Paraguay ago. Flew to Asuncion for another long weekend. Gave myself a little treat and stayed in quite a posh hotel…they even picked me up from the airport for free. Trying to find something to do in this country is a little difficult. They really haven’t got that much to offer except for the Chaco. But that’s miles up north in quite rough terrain. Even with 4 wheel drive I’d need tons of cash for the trip there plus I didn’t have the time. Lots of hardcore drivers enter the Chaco Rally and it’s so popular now. Shame I missed seeing it.
I spent the weekend visiting a 50 mile radius of Asuncion going into the nearby towns and villages. Nothing really to see let alone take pictures. Learnt a few things about the country especially how Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay kicked their arses during the triple alliance war. During the war almost 90% of the Paraguayan male population was killed leaving only the children left to continue on. When the war was over the government issued a law to allow a group of men to go from village to village to impregnate the women to try and repopulate the country. What a cool job…just going around having sex with the women and basically sowing your oats as they say. Luckily it worked.
I also learned that some German Nazi soldiers during the Second World War came here to hide or start a new life. The most famous one was Martin Bormann, he died and was buried in a local town called… they actually exhumed the body for DNA to prove that it was him. So the town got a little bit of notoriety unfortunately all for the wrong reasons.
In fact not just soldiers came to Paraguay, the government invited many German citizens to come and live in their country. Up north towards the Chaco there are a lot of Germans living there. Even the town names are in German. The majority of the Germans are called Mennonites, the type of people who don’t use technology like electricity or cars. They wear old fashioned clothes and the men have long beards. They are mostly blond but that’s not surprising. They look weird and out of place in the city but there are large communities of Mennonites North of Paraguay and I guess German is probably their third language after Spanish and Guaranis.
The capital city was nice and easy to get around. They had lovely memorial sites and the PresidentsPalace was pretty too. I was surprised at how close I could get to it. Don’t get me wrong, there was security around but they seemed laid back. That’s what I thought. I was able to walk around the palace’s back yard all the way to where they docked a navy ship. I guess in case the president needed a quick getaway. But as I tried to walk back in the other direction I heard a loud whistle. When I went to move in the opposite direction I heard another loud whistle. When I pointed my camera in the whistle blew. Basically every 10 seconds the guard blew his whistle to let me know I was doing something wrong. Every step I took was the wrong one and prompted a loud whistle. I eventually gave up and decided to walk back from where I came from and he blew his whistle again. He kept blowing his whistle even when I was on the pavement with other people. I was yelling at him saying I’m going, I’m leaving and I’m not taking any photos, stop blowing the bloody whistle. He laughed and I realised he was messing with me, the sod. I gave him a cheeky smile but really wanted to thump him but didn’t really want to be arrested by the military. Apparently they don’t get many visitors to the palace and he was bored.
I left the palace and was surprised to see only a few yards away the start of a shanty town. It’s not what I would have expected. It’s like walking down Whitehall and houses of parliament and having a shanty town on the opposite side of the street. Little piglets running around, kids with barely any clothes playing in the gardens. I took a walk alongside this as it ran alongside the monuments. Right hand side nice, lovely and clean, left hand side full of shacks and rubbish dumps. Really weird. They even had for sale signs on shacks that were empty. This continued all the way to the main square, kind of a park but it was filled with a mini campsite. Very run down with people showering and cooking in the same place. The smell was pretty bad…I guess this is where they go when they can’t afford one of the shacks in the shanty town. The contrast was amazing, how the rich lived on one side and the poor on the other.
I spent the last day around the capital again but this time there was a war memorial procession in the main square with brass bands and a military march. That was quite interesting and it got even better when the naked streaker turned up. I heard from a distance someone blowing a whistle. I turned to see what the fuss was and saw a very naked man being man handled by two policemen. I quickly left the procession and joined the crowds now gathering near the naked man. I took out my camera and took several photos and then decided to video the event. The police didn’t say anything to me about the camera which was surprising as I was blatantly filming them…might have been why they were so passive. The naked guy tried desperately to run away. Not sure if he was mentally ill or just trying to protest against the military presence. It was fun to watch the policemen trying to bundle him into the van. It took nearly half an hour to finally get him in. I’m sure when they got back to the station he would have got a right good kicking for making a show of himself.
Highlight of the trip.
