6th Entry 6-24-12 – Paraguay

 6^th Entry 6-24-12 – Paraguay

I just had my last meal in Paraguay.  The time has flown by here just as I expected.  I’ve had a great time here.  I stayed with a Meridian tennis teammate named Andres AKA Grandpa and his family.  Andres technically lives in Lambare, but it is actually about one block from Asuncion which is the capital of Paraguay.  Nic, another Meridian teammate lives in Asuncion as well.  I arrived to the Asuncion airport at about 3 in the morning last Monday.  Nic and Grandpa were there to meet me which was great because I was quite tired. 

During the week, Andres and I did all sorts of stuff.  Grandpa and I went to the country capital, saw some monuments around the area, saw the congress building, drove past the president’s house, saw the cathedral, played tennis, golf, computer, and ate some great food.  The capital building where the president actually works is an impressive building called “El Palacio de los Lopez.”  I was amazed when we visited the building that there were not any walls or fences around the boarder.  I’m pretty sure if I ran fast enough; I could have run up the front stairs of the building and given the president a hand shake!  Grandpa told me that there aren’t really any worries about terrorists or anything of that sort here so the lack of a fence isn’t a big deal.  Downtown Asuncion is crazy busy as you would expect any national capital to be.  Asuncion has about 2.5 million people in the metropolitan area.  The driving here is well….. Let’s just say you need to be aware at all times for a possible motorcycle rushing by, a public bus cutting you off, or a horse and carriage slowing you down.  Parking, as in any large city, is chaos here.  Something that I’m not accustomed to, however, is the people that “help” you park and “watch” your car while you are away.  Really the ‘car watchers’ just hang around where people park then when you come back to get your car, they come running up to get some money.  I told Grandpa that I wouldn’t pay them ever because I don’t think they do anything.  He said it’s better to just pay them so there aren’t any problems, so that’s what we always did. 

Asuncion and Paraguay overall are not touristy kind of places like Cusco, Peru was.  In Cusco for example, I had to really watch for pick pocketing, which if you have read the previous articles know didn’t go so well.  Here in Asuncion, I never really got that feeling.  I didn’t have people running up to me trying to sell me stuff or following me around talking to me in all sorts of languages trying to get my attention.  It was nice to not have to worry about shop owners try to pressure you into buying something as is common in more tourist centered locations.  Right around downtown is a train station that had very little, if any, postings talking about what it is/was.  Without Grandpa being with me, I would not have known that the train station was very, very old and that Paraguay actually had the first train in all of South America.  Andres and I both thought that there should be all sorts of information about Paraguay’s train past in and/or around the building.

I also did some very non-tourist activities.  For example, there is a computer game that Andres and I along with a few other teammates used to play back at Meridian, so one evening we played.  J  We also played golf one day with Nic.  We played nine holes.  I shot about 234 on the 9, which is about average for me.  The golf course was nice except for the mosquitos that were eating me alive.  Andres and Nic are both much better than I am so I frequently just kind of dropped a ball in a convenient place for myself.  We went to the driving range one day as well.  It was a lot of fun, especially trying to not hit the guy that was picking up golf balls about 75 yards away J  Honestly, Andres and I were bothered by the guy, and we were afraid to hit him…. All part of the fun I guess.  One afternoon we also played tennis.  Andres’ sister, Veronica, is the #1 female tennis player in Paraguay.  She will actually be playing in the Olympics in a few weeks.  Anyway, she played with Grandpa and me as well as one of Andres’ friends named Marcelo.  I was not only the worst one on the golf course, but also the worst one on the tennis court.  I had a great time playing though.  We played a few sets of doubles, and I actually played pretty well for having served about 50 balls in the last 16 months.  Andres who hasn’t played in about 3 months, of course played quite well.  His sister, Vero, played at another level.  She actually just came back from Europe where she played the qualifying rounds to get into Wimbledon and Roland Garros (The French Open).  We all had a great time on the court and no one took it too seriously. 

I’m very glad we went to downtown and to visit the capital early in the week because Paraguay’s president was impeached later in the week.  I happened to be in the country, in the capital nonetheless, when the first full impeachment happened in Paraguay’s more than 200 year history.  Nic had taken off work for Friday because we all had planned to visit Iguazu and Itaipú Dam.  Iguazu is home to a set of incredible water falls that are a big attraction.  The falls are situated ten minutes from the Parguayan boarder and separate Argentina and Brazil.  We were going to visit the Brazil side because I already have my Brazililan visa.  Itaipú Dam is huge hydroelectric dam shared between Brazil and Paraguay.  The hydroelectric dam is the most electricity producing hydroelectric plant in the world.  It was also the largest hydroelectric dam in the world for time before China built the Three Gorges Dam.  However with all the controversy going on with the impeachment, we opted to not make the trip.  Instead, we went to a few other smaller cities around Asuncion.  We visited one of the oldest churches in the country, Andres’ family farm, and a city that is geared for summer vacationers built up around a lake.  We spaced the trips out over two days since we had planned to visit the other locations during those two days.  It was great to see some other parts of Paraguay, and we all got to travel together, Nic, Andres, Nic’s brother Diego, and me. 

My next destination is Brazil.  I’m excited about Brazil, but I’m really not ready to leave Paraguay yet.  Andres’ family is really top notch.  They have done anything and everything to help me have a great visit to their country.  It has also been fun to visit old friends.  During my time at Meridian, I spent a lot of time with Nic during my freshman year, and Andres during my sophomore year, so getting to spend time with them again has been great.  I’ll be posting pictures from Paraguay soon (thanks to Grandpa’s camera… remember mine is bouncing around the black market of South America). 

In a few hours, I’ll meet my sister in the Rio de Janeiro airport, and we’ll begin our trip through Brazil and Argentina.