Guarani Esplendor Hotel Asuncion

... t want to cook. I enjoy having my weekends free and not having to answer to anyone. (In site, PCVs are always answering to someone and weekends are not free. We are volunteers 24/7/365) I even joined a gym recently with a few of my fellow coordinators. Fortunately, the gym isn't open on the weekends, so we couldn't go even if we wanted to.. ha ha. The year is broken up into 4 parts of travel for myself and my boss. The first is to do site presentations for the ...

... with whom you've had great laughs. :)<br><br>Paraguay is a country where tourism almost nonexistant. In the buses I was regularly the only cream-white one, and the looks carried a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. The touristic infrastructure is nowhere to be found, so one forgets about hostels and has to go to real hotels. As a result it's quite expensive to travel in Paraguay, because even the crummiest hotels aren't dirt cheap, and you don't want to go to a crummy hotel ...

... de taxirit vanaf het busstation naar het hotel presenteert de stad zich aan ons. Er staan prachtige koloniale gebouwen, keurig onderhouden en mooi verlicht en we zien hele wijken met armoedig uitziende bouwvallen. Er rijden dikke Mercedessen en BMW´s rond, terwijl de rammelende bussen minstens 40 jaar oud zijn en evenals onze taxi die - dat durf ik te wedden - van ellende in elkaar gaat storten voordat we het hotel bereiken (die weddenschap zou ik overigens verloren hebben). We zijn ...

... hopped on the next cable car and made a bee-line for the bus station.<br><br><br><br>Having asked around we found that the only way to Asuncion was to get a bus to the border town on Clorinda in Northern Argentina and go from there. The "helpful" young man selling us our tickets (whom we soon realised was as reliable as the Argentine government) assured us that we wouldn't have a problem crossing the border from Clorinda, "es muy facil" he calmly said. This was followed by my ...

... by 4x4 to the salt flats, which is one heck of a lot of salt and not much else around! we all had lots of fun taking silly pictures and visited a train cemetry. Our 4x4 got a flat tyre and we were left as the others drove out of sight, we didnt mind as we had Jim´s Ipod playing out providing excellent karoke. We had lunch at a cactus island which was very hot so we hid in the bar drinking sprites. We stayed out on the flats to watch the sunset which took ...

... the people in general are very friendly and prices are very reasonable without looking to hard u can easy get a good meal for 2 dollars and a hotel for 10 dollars a night, i also heard the electronics are really cheap here although you must watch out for fakes. So last night i met up with some people from Couchsurfing for some beers, we had a great time chatting and then went for a drive around asuncion showing me ...

... when I say my mouth watered for each course. The barbeque that night was among the best I've ever had in Paraguay (which is saying a lot, since they do barbeque pretty well here). Speeches were made and tears fell (mostly mine) but the night ended raucously with dancing to Kachaka music. Our last day in site we cleaned our house from top to bottom, preparing it for our awesome and competent follow-up volunteer, Nikita. The water pump broke ...

... bun made with mandocia flour.) I bought some and thought to my self only in Paraguay can you have warm chipa on a bus at 4:30 in the morning. after that about 5 the bus dropped us off on the side of the road and some guys from the mission picked us up. I got to ride in Rodrigos old VW bug. Then I got to sleep and today I spent cleaning the house Brazilian style, it is my week to clean, you would be so proud, I scrubed my little heart out.

... nicht wegen der Kälte aufzuwachen (hatte ich schon erwähnt, dass hier weder Fenster noch Türen wirklich schliessen und auch gar nicht dafür ausgelegt sind?), ist es mittlerweile sehr heiss geworden. Ich weiss nicht, wieviel Grad es hat, aber es müssen weit über 30 sein. Ausserdem fühlt sich hier Hitze wirklich heiss an, weil wenig Wind geht und wir noch dazu mitten in der Stadt sind. Ich weiss nicht, was das für die Mosquitopopulation bedeutet, aber ich ...

... s a decent start, but doesn´t account for the stray dogs and chickens and other ridiculous sights which are common place here. In a couple of hours I catch a bus to Bolivia. It does not look that far on the map but the journey is estimated to take between 30 to 40 hours, depending on conditions (which look bad today), and the thick line of road becomes a faint dotted line when it gets within 100 kilometres or so of the Bolivian border and is apparently a "bumpy dust way". Wish me luck...