Trans-Chaco and Ascuncion
The bus journey wasn’t as long as expected (17 hrs instead of 30). The journey is supposed to take longer during rainy season when the roads are hardly passable. At around midnight, the bus started to shake and toss around, so no sleep was possible.. The road wasn’t as bad as others I’ve encountered in Bolivia, but definitely the continent’s dustiest as the whole bus was coloured in a dark brown film (and so was I, my face was three tones darker than it used to be before, unfortunately not resulting from sunshine) The Bolivian border crossing meant one official sitting between two torches, in a completely dark surrounding area, but regardless, I received my Bolivian exit stamp. I was woken up again a few hours later for the Paraguayan border formalities and I found my bag lined up with all the others and the bus passengers standing in one line in front of their belongings. All the luggage was checked first by a dog and afterwards thoroughly manually. Understandable, as the Bolivian -Paraguayan border crossing is a main smuggle route. The customs official looking at my bag seemed to be extremely interested in my Maths book (how dangerous!) As the Chaco is mainly flat, no great scenery passed. Unfortunately, the bus passed the high Chaco, which is supposed to be the wildest part, during the night. The middle and low Chaco are just Palm fields along with grass fields and the road is paved starting from Marsical Estigarribia (apparently, this part of the Trans-Chaco has been just paved recently, which meant less dust and bumping). The Mennonites (mostly religious German immigrants) inhabit the middle Chaco and the wild high Chaco is inhabited by indigenous natives (which would have been definitely interesting to see).
The Hostel in Asuncion was a real winner, an extremely large room with 5m high ceilings in a colonial building and a nice kitchen for common usage. I planned to stay in Asuncion for 1 day, but stayed 4 instead and used the days for strolling around the city and the nights for drinking and partying in the local British Pubs, in karaoke Bars and Discos with an american who stayed at the same hostel. The president’s governmental building was surrounded by shacks and very skinny looking horses in the grass fields in front of the palace, such extreme contrasts are hard to find, even in South America. The day of my arrival, the 12th of June was a national holiday (the End of the Chaco war) and Lonely Planet writes: don’t walk around the city during public holidays when the city is deserted. As it was raining throughout my stay in Asuncion, I didn’t get to see the sourrounding area (which was supposed to be a nice recreation area..) Asuncion lies definitevely on the ‘off the beaten path’, but nonetheless, a lot of long time travellers and Gringos obviously find their way to the Paraguayan capital (so did I).
Having had a conversation for 10 minutes, only to discover that your counterpart is Swiss too! (this has been already the case a couple of times on this trip and is a quite nice surprise each time) I woke up with a noticeable hangover, but managed to get to the bus station and head to Ciudad del Este which is 6 hrs away and the border town which connects Paraguay with Brazil and Argentina. This journey makes my round trip almost complete as the Iguaçu falls are just across the border.
