Paraguay, an uncomfortable bus and our first two days in Bolivia

Wow, has it really been 6 days since my last post? Time flies...

10-14.05.: Paraguay

Tuesday

Took a day to explore Ciudad del Este, and fill up our cash -- ATMs without horrendous charges are becoming seldom. We hade to walk into the city center from our hotel, a 45 minute trip past a school. The students were painting a wall with scenes from Paraguayan history, mostly wars in surprisingly gruesome detail, but also the founding fathers, looking quite US-ish. Paraguayans seem to be quite as fervent about celebrating their independence as Americans.

We also bought about 4kg of fruit for less than 2€ from street vendors. This is a great place to like fruit.

Wednesday & Thursday

We arrived in Villarrica Wednesday afternoon, a town about halfway between Ciudad del Este and Asuncion, which is supposed to have a nice church and pretty parks. I prefer the parks, of which we found one with a small lake and some kind of giant guinea pig. The church, with two blocky, castle-like towers, was quite nice from the outside, but boring on the inside.

The people are very friendly; one stroll through the park, I had three lengthy conversations with people I did not at all understand. The hostess of the hotel kept trying to learn tidbits of English; I think the conversation started on a different topic, but after 3 minutes we agreed that "Como estas?" means "How are you?".

Friday & Saturday

6 hour trip to Asuncion, got out of the terminal and found a hotel around the corner, charging us 75 mil Guaraní a night for a tiny room with a balcony, from which we proceeded to watch the local nightlife and the upcoming evening thunderstorm.

In the morning, we took a bus in the general direction of the city center, and got out somewhere interesting looking. It turned out to be a market covering a couple of blocks, a labyrinth of stalls, the canvas of which all but hid the sky. To top it off, all the buildings around which the stalls where erected turned out to be shopping malls. Needless to say, we soon got lost, never found back to an interesting shop, and never found back to the street we came in on. 

After a while, we did find a bus back to the terminal, where we booked a bus to Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia (250 mil G pp). The bus was late, and not comparable to the comfortable bus we had from Rio to Foz de Iguacu: less room, smaller seats, a couple of windows would not close, and the toilet was all but unusable, having neither a toilet seat nor lights nor water, and you could see the passengers through a crack in the wall...

Luckily, we sat up front ( as is recommendable to do on buses in South America, to be as far from the toilet as possible), and the employees, a group of 4 people, had a nice time sitting in the drivers cabin together, listenig to loud music, and drinking whiskey and mate. By 10pm, we were travelling through the Chaco, the threefold savannah of western Paraguay, and had met Daniela, an Italian girl travelling the South Americas for half a year.

Because the third section of the Chaco, the Alto Chaco, is an uninhabited, thorny land of bushes, cacti and trees, we had to get our exit stamps at a sleepy frontier station near Mariscal Estigarribia, some 300km from the border. We stood around forever without anyone opening the office, with only a pack of street dogs halfheartedly trying to chase away a wild pig as entertainment, while our bus was thoroughly searched.

15-16.05.: Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia

Sunday & Monday

25 hours after leaving Asuncion, travelling long distances over a street only half there, often only going 30 km/h, through the intimidating but beautiful Alto Chaco and the just beautiful foothills of the Andes in southern Bolivia, we finally got to Santa Cruz, and Dani, Doro and I were able to go find a usable toilet.

We checked in at the wonderfully spacious jodanga hostel, 800m from the terminal bimodal and at most 2km frm the city center, as marked by the large basilika built in 1605. 70 BOB (Bolivianos, about 7€) a night in a 10 bed dorm, with breakfast, which is practically usury in Bolivia, as many people assured us.

Met a guy from french Switzerland, with whom we exchanged travelling tips, and a woman originally from near Pittsburgh, who is on a research trip through Bolivia, among other people.

Loitered around the city center for 3 hours, because the tourist office closed half an hour early, and reopened half an hour late; found out no-one has any usable maps of Bolivia above city level. The only apparent way to get a map you can hike with seems to be a GPS, which is both boring and expensive.

Tomorrow, we'll try to get to Ginger's Paradise, which sounds like a pretty cool place, and maybe find a way to hike into the Amboro National Park in the following days.