Paraguay: one eye open

Karina and I loll on the shaded veranda of Café Karumbé, looking across Encarnación’s central plaza, ordering beers every half hour or so, with no plans or place to go; just people-watching. It’s a perfect day. Through the pink-blossomed canopy of the lapacho trees on the square, the sky is a hot searing blue. College students relaxing on the worn benches chat and share tereré – a traditional Paraguayan iced tea-like infusion – and beaten-up pick-up trucks bicker at the crossroads with slick cars that look like they’ve been squeezed from tubes.

Encarnación has lazy charm, laced with idle threat; like a half-grown guard-dog opening one sleepy eye on a hot afternoon. Here everything is beguiling and distracting: I am busily bemused but at the same time 'tranquilo', calmly on the outside looking in. Across the plaza someone is trying to sell tiny mop-like puppies through the open windows of cars waiting for the lights to change. Who buys them? A sparkly-eyed boy of about ten approaches us and tries to flog some pirate DVDs. We shake our heads: he doesn’t realise it’s disbelief. Cycling chipa-bread hawkers with their tinny loudspeakers and the occasional scrawny horse-drawn carumbe echo by; each momentarily causing chaos at the crossroad, stalling progress. Noisy ghosts from a dusty past; as in so much of Paraguay, here such anachronisms trot faithfully alongside the enthusiastic, yearning modernism that promises to overwhelm them.

We order another beer as the sun begins to sink. It’s a different world here; one to watch.