Paraguay and preparing the van for a south American road trip!

Summer is fading and Autumn is here, that brings a refreshing breeze after the hot and humid summer months. When its near 40 degrees and 98 percent humidity and your sweating 4 litres a day its hard to believe that this country can ever be cold.  Apparently even a few days of frost a year, when the winter weather comes up from Antarctica.. brrrr sounds nasty, but so far from a summer reality.  However right now its perfect, around the 28 degree mark, which I believe is the perfect daytime temperature, that centigrade of course folks!

So what have we been up to? Well back in February we bought a VW Kombi a 1990 edition of a Brazilian produced van. It was seemingly in reasonable shape and the colour sold itself to us! Nothing like a bit of paint to make things look better than they are, well that's not quite fair... We have done what anybody who is embarking on a long journey of unknown risks would do, we changed the wear and tear parts and made it as safe as possible, then changed the clutch and now were on to an engine rebuild.  The inside has been the part where we have actually done the design and work, in fact the credit goes to Sandrine as she has done 70 percent of the work and all the design aspects, she just gets me to chop up bits of wood and screw things down.  So by the start of May we should have a van that pretty much as good as you can get for that kind of car, by that I mean a car with no heating or cooling system and no power steering and not 4x4!! However the bed is fantastic, 2m by 1.60 so the three of us can sleep comfortably, in fact soon it will be two of us as Lili will have her own hammock bed in the front.

After spending the first month in Asuncion and the farm of Briggite and Lucio we heading down and right to the city of Encarnacion, where we were joining other VW enthusiasts on a road trip.  It turned out to be a car exhibition for antique cars and our rather dirty looking kombi was more than welcome. We arrived and it was around 40 degrees so we were happy to see a beach just in front of us! Now this is Paraguay along with Bolivia the only two landlocked countries in South America, but they do have rivers, in fact quite a few.  The other side of the river was Argentina and the city of Posadas which had the image of a kind of New York skyline.  The water was clear but shallow and you were not allowed to go past the buoys or risked getting arrested, we saw a few bathers being threatened by the life guards with such treatment.  After a couple of days in the city and a quick trip to Argentina we headed out of town to stay at a camp-site in a small reserve, it had a swimming pool and friendly staff but an absence of other guests.  The area is famous for its Jesuit ruins which are located nearby and pose as one of Paraguay's major tourist attractions, I saw one other person there!  Paraguay does not have man tourists, maybe thats why the locals are so friendly. The only foreigners you see here are German speaking, some are third generation others new immigrants.

Borrowing owls live in holes in the ground

Jesuit Ruins near Encarnacion

We headed back to the farm of Briggete and Lucio where Sandrine finished the van interior and I dug posts for electric cable, cemented brick walls and dug a big hole for a swimming pool/ water storage for irrigation.  Sandrine tried her luck at selling some of her hand made jewellery at a market where we met lots of German people, one couple Klaas and Andrea  have a bit of land and were kind enough to allow us to camp the kombi on their land and even gave us electric and water, thanks!

We drove the kombi to the garage to have an engine overhaul after it leaked 2 litres of oil on a 400 km journey, no we are homeless but fortunately through couch surfing found a young couple who invited us to share the home whilst looking for howler monkeys!  On the second day and with the help of asking local people we managed to track down this troop and now Johane and Rorueguiz hope to protect this group and move some members to other small groups like this one to help increase genetic diversity and long term survival of these monkeys in a rapidly depleting forested area around Asuncion.

 

At this moment we do not know how long we have to wait in Paraguay until we have the papers for the car.  This process can take quite a long time, maybe around 4 months, we have already waited 2.  However the people are very friendly we have met lots of good friends and its 28 degrees!! Theres plenty of nature.  The buses known as collectivos are a fun place to learn more about the culture.  They are like a moving supermarket in Aunscion with various vendors getting on at each stop to sell black market goods from Argentina or simply bottles of coca cola.

Fire Bird