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| Leo, Russ and Oscar in front of rocks with Pentagonal formation in Areagua |
Its been a little while since the last entry in this blog... mainly due to a frustratingly slow internet connection in Paraguay where we were staying.
So what's
been happing and where have we been?
We have now officially passed the 2 year mark of constant travelling. No idea how many KM/Miles we have covered but its 10 countries worth, which is not a big number but reflects the kind of travel that we have done, which is find a place and stay for a while then do a bit of travel and then stay again in another place for a while. Constant travelling is tiresome and you never really feel satisfied. Spending a few weeks or longer feels much nicer.
We have finished the works on the van but changing the name of the ownership in Paraguay is a mess, with long delays and until we do change the name we cannot leave Paraguay borders with the van. We have a few options, wait or sell the van and move on. For the moment we have decided to travel in Brazil and see how things move. We never planned to drive the van in Brazil or visit the country, so its an extra!! Learning a bit of Portuguese to help the travels.
Over the past 4 months we spent most of our time at a school in Aregua. It rained so much that most of the time we spent wet! The school ( El Cantaro ) offers free classes to kids from the area. We have been participating by helping with things like Bio construction, building pallet furniture and helping out in the gallery with painting of artwork. Lili made great friends with the son of the owners and has been learning some Spanish.
Oscar(from photo at top) has a great story, we met him in Asuncion, he approached Sandrine after hearing her talk French. He was adopted by a French family when he was five. Originally born in Paraguay. He has come here to learn about his country of birth. He is learning Spanish, again, and searching for his roots. In the last month he has managed to track down his birth mum and has been reunited and met his 7 other brothers and sisters!! So cool!
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| Lili in her boots! |
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| Aregua Church |
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| Aregua Lake |
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| Party night at the school! |
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| Bio Construction, mixing the mud sand and straw! |
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| Gustavo in the kiln before we lit it! |
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| Pallet bench I made! Leo, Fernando and Cilvia |
We drove the van over to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay and onto Foz de Iguzu in Brazil and visited the magnificent waterfalls on both Brazilian side and Argentinian. Both sides are great and offer slightly different things. Ciudad del Este is in Paraguay and is a massive shopping centre. It offers Brazilians and Argentinians the chance to buy goods at discount prices due to lower taxes, there is almost no border control.
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| At the falls |
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| The Iguazu falls (Brazil) |
Paraguay has an area named the Chaco, which contains 60% of the land mass but very few people, there are many birds and animals that you do not find in other places on the planet. There is one tarmacked road that runs from Asuncion over to Filidelfia and then a dirt road continues to Bolivia. Unless you have a 4x4 car you are unlikely to make it to Bolivia. We drove to Filidelfia and were lucky with the weather and able to drive some dirt roads in the Kombi without to much problem, one night it did rain and the next days the roads that had been good and hard were now rivers of mud!!
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| Loads of raptors in the Chaco |
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| Terns with great bills! |
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| Palo Boracho (means drunk tree) |
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| Same tree close up. |
Chaco morning
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| Chaco sunset |
Sandrine wanted to make contact with one of the indigenous groups, whilst in the Chaco, to make some jewellery from Palo Santo wood. The experience of being in the village was a little like being back in India. We arrived in the kombi got out and within 5 minutes the whole village had come out to meet us we were surrounded by kids and ladies in brightly coloured skirts. They were really curios to know who we were and what we wanted, smiles all around.
On our trip we have now all had two days in hospital. I had two nights in Bangalore with a severe migraine caused by an unknown virus, Sandrine two nights with Dengue Fever in Thailand and now Lili 2 nights in Paraguay with a Black Widow Spider bite. We were sleeping in the Kombi in a very rural area and suddenly Lili woke up from her bed and started crying and complaining of stomach pain and difficulty breathing. Sandrine made me drive the 1 hour drive in the middle of the night across rough terrain to the nearest hospital, I was convinced it was indigestion and so not well pleased but Sandrine pressed the issue. The doctor did not know what it was, so called a surgeon who arrived looking as bleary eyed as I felt, he said she should be kept in the hospital and tests done in morning... the tests were done and they still had no idea what was wrong with her... on the second night she had pain in her legs... suddenly the penny drops for one of the doctors and says symptoms fit black widow spider bite... Lili was fine within 36 hours of first pain and jumping around like nothing had happened!! She is a strong girl!!
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| I never found the spider, but I took this picture of a snake which crossed behind me about three hours before Lili was bitten. I believe it to be an Argentine Coral, which is poisoness but non aggressive. |
Paraguay has two languages spoken by most people, Spanish and Gurani, however the Indigenous have other languages as well. Paraguayan Spanish is quite different from Spanish spoken in Spain, both in accent and word usage. For me its sounds like Spanish spoken with a west country British accent. Lots of Arrrs also you have to be careful with sentences using certain words, donde puedo cojer un taxi, in Spain means where can I catch a taxi, but in Paraguay Cojer means Fuck! Where can I fuck a taxi!! You have to use Tomar, take!! The locals love laughing at Spanish people caught in their "trap".
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| Waterfall in national park |
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| Leo and Roxane our travel companions to a national park. |
After taking the decision to check out Brazil we took a bus to Conception in the north of Paraguay and then a boat up the river to the Brazilian port of Porto Murtinho. The boat ( named
Aquidaban ) leaves Conception once a week at 11 am Tuesday and costs 100,000 Guarenies per person ($20) (2015 July) If you get lucky you pay another 100,000, and get a cabin which sleeps 4, we got lucky! No cabin means you get a hammock which hangs in the middle of the gangway with everyone walking past you all day and night. (30,000 Guaranies) If you have nothing you fins a space on the floor or a seat and don't pay extra. The boat goes up the river to its destination Bahia Negra which is on the border with Bolivia. It arrives on Friday, stops unloads and turns around to go back to Conception on Sunday... Some people do this every week bringing goods from the city up to the various rural isolated communities served only by this river boat service. We got off after just 30 hours,quite enough with Lili on a small boat! For anybody reading this wondering about accommodation in Conception, there's a good choice and cheap. Porto Murtinho we arrived at 10 pm and chose the first place we found after crossing the river from the free trade island which is still part of Paraguay and where the boat stops and onto Brazilian territory.
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| Lili between the four beds in cabin.. spacious! |
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| Sunset from the boat! |
So for now we are in Brazil, learning Portuguese, unsure of where we will be tomorrow.... Thanks for reading!
