All Quiet In Asuncion
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2006
1
206
228
Trip End
Jul 15, 2008
Asuncion,
Asuncion,
Paraguay
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Asuncion, Paraguay
Exchange rate: 4,100 guarani = $1
We can't even find a guidebook on Paraguay, although we've read on-line that Footprints publishes one. We know very little about the country and never anticipated being here. But it is in the way of our route to Bolivia and beyond. The more popular route from Iguazu to Bolivia is around the south of Paraguay to Salta in the northwest of Argentina. Salta is no doubt a very nice place. While in Buenos Aires we read that the movie actor Grier just bought some property there. That was a good enough reason to miss it. If we felt we had more time we would have gone there but it seems like the kind of place you have to settle into to appreciate, not like the Iguazu Falls which you see and then leave. Going north from Salta into Bolivia puts you in a good position to see the salt flats in Bolivia
26-01
. Everything takes time and our internal clocks are ticking with a view to getting home early this summer. We've gone back and forth on whether to see the salt flats and have decided instead to travel across the Gran Chaco of Paraguay and Bolivia. From Puerto Iguazu we had two choices to get to Paraguay. We could take a bus across the Rio Iguazu to Foz du Iguazu in Brazil and from there a bus over the friendship bridge across the Rio Parana to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. But that would probably require us to pay Brazil a visa fee, which we are loathe to do. Instead we go to the dock and board a ferry and go straight down the Iguazu to its confluence with the Rio Parana. The two rivers make a T there and on the other side of the Parana is the town of Puerto Franco, Paraguay. The ferry runs every hour and it is a short trip. We got our passports stamped out from Argentina at the immigration office near the dock and bought our tickets for 10p. When we got off on the Paraguay side we went to the immigration officer who told us that if we want a tourist visa we had to go back to Puerto Iguazu and get it at the consulate there. We did a lot of talking in broken Spanish and he finally gave us transit visas which ordinarily are only good for 72 hours but he would not put any expiration date on ours. We are simply in transit for an indefinite period. He took $50 from each of us for this service. We noticed he never wrote anything in his book; not even our names or passport numbers
26-02
. From Puerto Franco we took a taxi into Ciudad del Este. We paid $30 for the taxi, which was robbery, but the driver originally wanted $50 and he was the only one there. If you are a real backpacker you could just walk up the hill to the local bus stop and wait for the next bus to Ciudad del Este. It is a long walk up a steep hill and it didn't look like there were many buses running. Don't follow our example we are not good budget travelers, we should have bargained harder. The taxi driver took us to the bus terminal in Ciudad del Este and told us the RYSA bus line was the best one to take to Asuncion. Our two tickets on RYSA to Asuncion cost 150,000 guarani, which is about $37.
Our bus left at 12:40 PM and was very nice. We arrived in Asuncion about 6:30 PM. Before leaving the bus station at Asuncion we purchased our onward tickets to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The bus to Santa Cruz doesn't leave until Sunday evening so we have to stay two nights here. We got a taxi at the bus station and told the young man we wanted to go to the Hotel Imperial. We had searched Asuncion hotels here on Travelpod and saw that someone had stayed there. The driver said he knew where it was and we set off. But on the way our driver told us he knew a better hotel in the same area, so he took us to the Hotel Preciedo, which he said was a three star hotel. Arvid went in to check to see what a room there looked like, while Irina waited
26-03
. The room was okay but we still wanted to see the Imperial. The driver took us there and Arvid went in to check the rooms. The room he was shown was aged with three lumpy beds. We have stayed in worse and the price was only about $20 but after Arvid had left the car the driver told Irina the place was used by prostitutes. He only spoke Spanish but Irina understood that much. But just to be sure he called his wife, who spoke English, to have her explain this to Irina. The guy seemed to be sincerely concerned about us so we gave in and went back to the Preciedo at $40/night. It was better then it first seemed and had free internet. April 26, 2008
Asuncion, Paraguay
Most of the shops are closed on Saturdays in Asuncion. This is strange but true. We visited the train museum and walk by the government buildings, the cathedral and then down to the port just to check things out. It's is even hard to find any place to eat, most of the restaurants are also closed. The receptionist at our hotel says that the other side of the city is more 'alegrado', whatever that means, and that this is the administrative center of town. There could be more going on on the other side of town, but the historic center of a town is usually its heart and from what we see the place is dead. There are a few groups of men setting in the park playing cards and drinking mate
26-04
. It seems more like a Sunday than a Saturday. When we walked through the park by the Legislative Palace we noticed that just on the other side of the park is a sprawling shanty town of shacks cobbled together from odd materials. This is the type of slum you might find on the outskirts of a city in the third world, but here it is right next to the seat of power. We had thought that Paraguay would have a large indigenous population. But we saw very little of that; nearly everyone was of European extraction, about like the population in Argentina. We also talked to several people about the new president the country elected just a week or so before we got there. A former bishop he was the first candidate outside the Colorado party to win election. We wondered if there had been any violence during the campaign and our taxi driver told us there was none ... zero he said because all the people wanted the change.
04-2-08
Asuncion, Paraguay
Our bus to Santa Cruz, Bolivia leaves tonight at 7 PM so we have time to see some more of the city and importantly we discovered that the post office stays open all day on Sunday. So we are able to ship off 8.85 kilograms of stuff at a cost of 154,000 guarani. This lightens our load considerably.
