The World's Most Boring Blog

I have just arrived back in Spain after 5 months on the road, and what a ride it has been; certain people have followed by trip the entire way on my blog, and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed writing it.

It’s very early to have a certain view on the trip in retrospect, I’m still bewildered from being back, but it’s a trip that has changed my life, and my view upon life, but then, all great changes in your life do exactly that.
Certain people on the trip have made a bigger impact than others, of the most important I can mention: Mike Gasson, Jimmy, Dave, Sarah, Carl, Miguel, Anne Dorte, Stephen, James, Johno, Karin, Flavio, Julian, Magte, Tono, Antonio, Heather, Lisa, Moni, Bob and the star of the show… Gilbert.

I have also had a lot of help from the homefront: Hanne (mother), Jesper (father), Anne Sophie (sister), Bo (stepfather) and Anette (friend). Especially without the help of these individuals, the trip never would have been or it would have failed while I was underway.

With a disregard to all that I have just written, I would like to extend a thank you, to everyone on this list:

Family, friends and everyone who has been reading the blog!

Uruguay: Those 5 Danes

Colonia Del Sacramento: The Brit and the Aussie

Puerto Madryn: Sarah and Kyle

Rio Gallegos: Timo, Jonah and Fred

Ushuaia: Andreas, Uri, Layden and the 4 Israeli girls

Punta Arenas: Carl, Tamar, Adina, Keenan, Irish couple, Jack, Roman, Mike and the two Aussie’s in their 50’s.

Puerto Natales: Bill, Kat, Bo, the guy from Punta Arenas, Monty (the cat), Britney, Jenny, German girl, Vicky and Sophia

Torres Del Paine: Urs, John, John, Susan, Katy, Rafael, Natasha, Albert, Nick, Whitney and the two Irish guys.

Calafate: Edward

Chalten: Mike

Futaleufú: Eyal, Rachel, Dave and Eddie

El Bolsón: Lucia

Bariloche: Patrick, Reut, the Israeli twins and Jimmy

Bariloche -> Valdivia: Lindsay

Pucón: Everyone at hostel Etnico, everyone who went up the volcano with me (in particular Yong)

Santiago: The staff at La Chimba hostel and Mike (of El Chalten fame)

Rapa Nui (Easter Island): Miguel, Chen, Kieran, Melissa, Larry, Jimmy (From Bariloche),John, Emma, Brian, John (Montana), Alejandra

Buenos Aires: Eddie (of Futaleufú fame), Anne Dorte, Jon, Karen, Elena, Jane, Becky, Eric, Madoka, James, Steve, Stefan, Darren, Deborah, Chris

Puerto Iguazu: Two German girls, Canadian girl and the two Danish girls

Ciudad Del Este: Dan and Rommi

Santa Cruz -> La Paz: Lorgio

La Paz: Patrick (from Bariloche) and Danny

La Paz -> Cuzco: Florian

Cuzco: Steve and James (from Buenos Aires), Karin, Anna, Heather, Ley, the 3 Norwegian girls, Ingrid, Johno, Maria, Charlotte, Mike Gasson (from El Chalten and Santiago) and the Kiwi girl.

Inca Trail: Flavio, Julian, the porters and the cook, Rob and Dee Ann

La Paz: Nadja, Yasmin, Heather, Uval, Maud, Jonathan, Ivan and Macro

Potosi: Cameron, Monica, Allan, William, Anaïs, Angela and Aaron

Uyuni: Angela (from Potosi), Declan and Judy

Sucre: Andrew, Tamsyn and Trevor

La Paz: Jimmy

Pampas: Jimmuy, Laia and Tono

Jungle: Jimmy, Antonio and Jesus

La Paz: Jimmy, Heather, Roly and Anita

Copacabana: Jimmy

Habana: Lisa, Amasa and Lily

Santiago de Cuba: Lisa (from above)

Comandancia La Plata: Moni

VIlla Santa Domingo -> Camaguey: Shane and Steve

Cuba: All the family’s I stayed with, ate with and talked with; you showed me the best side of Cuba.

Washington, D.C.: Hiro, Carlos, Rachel & Eyal (from Futaleufu and Bariloche), Bill Colburn, Jackie, Rick and Rav Shmuel.

New York: Tony, Anne Sophie (my sister), Peter & and his son Tony as well as

Chicago: Bob, Amanda and the people on the Wicker park tour

Boston: Amelia

I’m just gonna leave you with a feeling of my trip, I know with this massive list of people above, it doesn’t feel right, and I’m not saying it gives a sense of my entire trip, but you will also notice that few people are mentioned more than once (it won’t work if you are reading this in an email, you have to go to the website):

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So before I leave you… Beyond the sky and the earth, thank you.

5^th of April:

Roused from my sleep at 5:30 in the morning as we have made it to Mariscal Estigarribia, which although far from the Bolivian border is where the exit stamp from Paraguay is given. I also believe that the officials were as sleepy as me and everyone else (except the driver, I hope) as they stamped the wrong day in my passport, so now I left Paraguay on the 4^th instead of the 5^th. Back on the bus I went back to sleep, much like all the other passengers.

I woke up again around 8.30, and started The Odyssey and this time finished it, what an amazing book, truly it has held up the test of time, and is a worthy recommendation for everybody. Back in the real world, I still couldn’t get the Swedes to talk, I don’t know why, but they will rather sit and quietly stare out the window, all 3 of them, so I just let them do so. Instead I start reading a book I have been anxious to read for some time now, when I was in Buenos Aires I picked up the sequel to Master and Commander, called Post-Captain. However it was also around this time I discovered, that my water bottle had broken open and my diary, which had been in water for some time now, had taken heavy water damage, especially the spine, and the pages with writing (my pen was lodged there, giving the water easy access) have been badly damaged, so at a later time I will have to carefully dry it.

Later on the trip, deeply taken in by my book, we had stopped for one of the countless checks you have to endure in Bolivia: I had crossed into Bolivia around 10 or 11 o’clock, a process that was very painless and gave a beautiful blue and green stamp, much like the Chilean, except for green instead of red. Anyway the checkpoint soldiers were waving my rucksack around, calling out in an aggressive tone for the owner, so I pulled out my passport, toughened myself and went to see what was wrong. I was immediately asked why I was carrying questionable substances, which normally means drugs, but in my case meant contact lenses. so after having explained the nature of contact lenses, they let me have my rucksack back, allowed me to repack it (they tore everything out, possibly looking for white powder), and the bus was off again.

After a long and uninteresting drive (after the drug check(, I arrived in Santa Cruz, and instead of crashing on a bed somewhere, I decided to take a second bus, straight to La Paz, and instead get some time there, and then take a a night bus the day after to Cuzco and arrive on the 8^th in the morning, thus getting more or less 1,5 full days in La Paz, although I o intend to return.

But one has to be way in South America, this is also a tale of how I got my money cheated away from me, although I wasn’t aware. I went into the terminal to buy my ticket, and found a nice looking company which would take me straight to La Paz, only 18 hours (on top of my initial 23 hours) and at the meager price of 250 Bolivian peso. Since I was a new arrival I had unfortunately not checked what a Bolivian peso was worth, and since the bus left about 10 minutes later, I thought I might as well just seize the ticket, so to speak.

On board the bus I sat next to a very kind Bolivian named Lorgio, who frequently travels around the country (he is a farmer with 5 different estates, a sort of engineer). The bus left at 20 o’clock, but we talked for a long time into the night, and I really do swear that my discussions become more advanced; not only did we talk about the usual stuff, but also immigration problems in Denmark, caused by the Muhammed cartoons. This would also be a good time to point out, that I do not master Spanish to such a degree, far from. What I do is make up sentences from simpler words, gesticulate or make the other person guess it, and learn the word that way. That being said, I have never set out to say something, and not gotten it across. He lives in a city called Rurrenabaque, which is a place I am going to, as the nearby park holds the worlds greatest biodiversity, including 10% of all known bird species. But sleepiness overcame me, and I eventually said goodnight and tried to get some sleep. However this was a domestic Bolivian trip, which meant screaming babies, horrible seats with knees in your back, and around 1 o’clock, I was woken up as someone was shouting something about a police/military search of the bus. It turned out that the driver had just thought it a great idea, that when everybody in the bus was sleeping, to stop at a roadside place, where there are toilets and food to buy, who wouldn’t want that in their sleep?

One thing I forgot to mention is how to use public toilets, you go up and pay a ridicules sum of 1 Bolivian peso, you then get some toilet paper and a ticket. The toiletpaper I get, but you are right at the entrance, why would I need a ticket, to verify that I purchased my entrance, I’m already there. It is still a funny concept however.

6^th of April:

Around 8 o’clock, the bus arrived in Cochabamba (Kotjavamba), and the driver told everyone to get out, something that hardly reached me as I was going to La Paz, or so I thought. Turns out that the bus company I was driving with doesn’t go further than La Paz, so although I knew it to be futile, I decided to have some free fun, and went into their office to complain. Not only did it in fact say on the ticket that it was only valid till Cochaama, it also said that I only paid 60 Bolivian peso for it… Enraged by this pathetic abuse of my money, I did nothing, there was nothing to do. So I went with Lorgio to buy a new ticket, and we each bought a ticket to La Paz, this time a somewhat shorter trip (7,5 hours) but at a meagre 30 Bolivian peso. Afterwards we had breakfast, a sort of Bolivian empanada, just with a greater diversity of content and the name “saltena”.

We boarded the bus (Lorgio and I), this last part was rather uninteresting, although for once they showed movies, but as to be expected, they were dubbed into Spanish with no subtitles. We arrived in La Paz trouble free, where Lorgio helped me buy a ticket to Cuzco, although I had hoped for a nightbus the following day, only morningbuses were available, which means I will arrive in Cuzco at 1 or 2 in the morning, but such is life. I took a taxi all the way through La Paz to my hostel, which cost me approx. 1 USD, a sum I am ready to pay. Once in my hostel, I signed up for the dinner that was arranged there, and checked out (as I was leaving so early, having to be at the terminal at 8 in the morning). In my room I met Danny from Cambridge, and we talked for lengths about music, in particular the music he could play on his guitar, right up until the moment when one of his strings snapped.

After such a long bus trip, I really wasn’t up for anything, so I didn’t do anything. Just sat around reading in my book, being unhappy with all supermarkets being closed, so I would have absolutely no food on my 16 hour bustrip the following day.

I had signed up for a good dinner at the hostel, which although was a bit small. But afterwards when I walked back to my room, I met Patrick (of Bariloche fame), that wonderful Irish guy, which is why it almost saddened me that I was leaving the next day. However we did recap on what we had done, since last we had met. But that was also around when i discovered that my DVD’s with my pictures on were gone, stolen. I searched high and low for them, all over the hostel, and with the assistance of Patrick, but they were simply nowhere to be found. Luckily I always burn my DVD’s out to two copies, but it is still very annoying, and would steal them? The only DVD which is now lost, is my DVD #2. The major problem being that the copy my father has (I send them home), doesn’t work. I had the DVD #2 on me along with #4 and #5 as I was hoping to send them home by post, but that wasn’t possible as the post service in Paraguay is horrible, and here in Bolivia the postal workers are on strike.

But I was tired and hungry, so instead of prolonging my pain, I went early to bed to get some decent sleep, something I really needed after two horrible nights sleeping on a bus.

7^th of April:

I woke several times during the night, it is a lot colder here (La Paz is at an altitude of 3000m, which gives a lot of new arrivals headaches, but my only problem is the air being too thin to whistle), but the beds are well equipped. I woke several times during the night, as several people came back at different times, causing somewhat of a ruckus. However at 6.15 I had slept for a long time (went to ed at 22), so I got up, packed my bag, confirmed my reservation for Cuzco, the destination of today.

I caught a taxi to the terminal, and sat around for an hour waiting, before I bought some sandwiches and some water for the trip, and just like that I was off for Cuzco. As we came closer to the Paraguay border, we had to endure more and more searches, more and more stops; but nothing happened. And then after some 2,5 hours we arrived at the border. Here we had to leave Bolivia, cross a bridge and officially enter Peru.

Furthermore we also had to change bus, as our own bus was tiny, and a lot more would join us from other buses. Unfortunately for us, they left on later buses, so we had to wait for a very long time. But the time passed and we boarded our second bus, which took us as far as Puno. In Puno we once again had to change bus (by now, only two of us who left La Paz were left).

After a busride which felt unbelievably long, not helped by the Spanish dubbed Chuck Norris film, which was so worn (VHS) that you couldn’t see anything, just hear it; the bus arrived in Cuzco. So Florian (a German I had met on the bus) and I took a taxi to a hospedaje (guesthouse), as the hostel I was gonna stay at was full (my reservation wasn’t till the following day). I went straight to sleep, and just like that… I was in Cuzco.

3^rd of April:

As I had gone early to bed the previous day, I for once awoke when I intended to. I wanted to catch the 7.30 bus to Asuncion, and I surely did. It was a 6,5 hour busride, and as per usual I looked out my window at every single stop, just to make sure that my bag stayed on.

I arrived in Asuncion in good time, it was still early in the day; but finding my way to the centre of the city, was nowhere easy. There are no real busstops, only signs which shows that certain lines may stop here… Of course only if they feel like it. The only busline which I knew would take me to my guesthouse (no hostel), was line 8 and according to several people around, that bus only goes once an hour, and it had just left… I had no intention of waiting around for that long, especially not with my big rucksack on, and a sun that sets early. So after a bit of bargaining, I got a taxi driver to take me relatively cheap (2,5 euro). My taxi driver, was a really nice guy, and with him I had my so far most complex Spanish conversation, which was mainly about the presidential election (more about that in a moment), but also about Denmark, which he was very much intrigued about. To him the only languages in existence were, Spanish, Guarani (the native language of Paraguay), German and English, so when I told him that we speak Danish in Denmark, he was very much interested. Also like any other man in South America, upon hearing my nation of origin, he mentioned Michael Laudrup and Peter Schmeichel, but he did it with much more conviction than anyone else, as if he really appreciated those players.

Upon arriving, I was not only told that the guesthouse was full, but that every single guesthouse was full. The presidential election is on the 20^th of April, and while I had noticed in Encarnacion that there was something going on… It was nothing like in Asuncion. And apparently the supporters from all over the country, had come to Asuncion in order to support their party. Parades of cars with flags all over and speakers with endless noise, were coming down most streets, buses clad in flags and people walking with big drums, almost blowing out my drums (eardrums). According to my taxidriver, not only did he know a cheap place (more about that later), the party all those people were supporting, was Lista 1, the party which is currently in control, and is corrupt beyond reason (this is after all, the most corrupt country outside Africa).

My taxidriver then took me to another place, which was actually listed in the Lonely Planet, Hotel Plaza. it wasn’t nice compared to the price, but I didn’t have much choice, the Lonely Planet described it as great value (not exactly a tribute to the rest of the options, or indeed the country), and it was only for one night; so I accepted, dumped my bag and set about the city. One thing I always do when I’m in a capital, is follow the walking tour which is outlined in the Lonely Planet. The Buenos Aires tour was fairly disappointing (Anne Dorthe can attest to that), but the Santiago one really had me, and the same goes for the one in Montevideo. And in Asuncion it was somewhere in between; it wasn’t grand and filled with slendour, but then nothinig is in Paraguay. The only building which impressed me was the presidential palaca (a big white house… I wonder where they got that idea from). But Asuncion is different, just like the rest of the country, there is not really any tourism, and so the place isn’t geared towards it.

There are hardly any streetsigns, any of those lightboxes telling you whether or not you can cross a street, you just have to test your luck (I did), but most impressively, I couldn’t find any postcards… I have sent postcards home from every country except Uruguay (at the beginning of my trip) and now Paraguay, there just weren’t any to be found. Nobody speaks English at all; in the busterminal, I tried to get some information about the Trans-Chaco bus to Santa Cruz in Bolivia, and not only was the woman selling the ticket less enthusiastic about her job than Edmund Blackadder going over the top, she didn’t speak a word of English, and when I asked (in Spanish, nobody speaks German in Asuncion either) about the food on the bus (30 hour busride), she launched into a spasm of all her limbs, and jibbered away SO fast even a Chilean would be blown away… I actually never found out.

When I mention the Lonely Planet book as a big reference, it is because it is a good guide, please understand, that it only guides me, it doesn’t show me the way, I do stuff on my own, but in places like this you need some sort of reference, if you don’t want to leave your fate up to the chance of greedy taxidrivers and unknowing employees at the nonexistent (in Paraguay) tourism offices. Now some people had told me this would turn literal (about being shown the way), but so far the maps in the book had never failed me (except for a single museum in Rio Gallegos, but that had been closed, so it hardly counts), but what the fuck (pardon my French) happened here? Not only were museums, restaurants and places (except for those on the walking tour) not where they were supposed to be (a few were), but some of the museums were utterly unknown to the locals, even the ones who worked in the hotel I stayed at.

For dinner I went to the Bar San Roque which was shown as the best place in town, listed in the splurge box, when in fact it was quite on par with the rest of Asuncion. It is a very old place (103 years, quite a lot for Paraguay), filled with nice wooden tables and chairs, and with waiters in tuxedo’s and bowties. I had some horse meat, which was almost divine (though unable to rival La Cabrera in Buenos Aires, but that hardly comes as a surprise), with a sidedish of splendid chips. Afterwards it was getting rather late, and I did fancy a good nights sleep. It was here in my room, on my way to bed that I figured out that I would take the Trans-Chaco bus the following day, instead of taking a trip to Concepcion, 6 hours each way, just for a single night? I am not sure if I have mentioned this, but I have to be in Cuzco on the 11^th of April, to allow me at least 2 nights sleep at the high altitude of Cuzco before I head on the Inca Trail on the 13th, that and to pay for the rest of the Inca Trail (I have only paid a $150 deposit so far).

4^th of April:

Having gone fairly early to bed, I woke up with plenty of time before my 10 o’clock check out, but went down in good time anyway, to eat my included breakfast and ask whether I could leave my bags there for the day, as my busride wasn’t before 20.30 anyway. I could, and I was told that I had until 12 o’clock to check out in any case. So I took my first ride with what the Lonely Planet (quite accurately) describes as “noisy, one-rattling Kamikaze-like city buses”. And here is why, if you are a foreigner (such as me), the buses don’t stop… They only slow down to around 10-15 km/h, and then it is up to you, to run up alongside it and jump on. If you are a local it slows down to 5 km/h, unless there are a lot of people in which case it stops; it also stops for the elderly. The bus I was on was one of the newer buses (that means early 80’s judging from the current state of it), but what I like most about city buses in Paraguay (this goes for Ciudad Del Este and Encarnacion as well) is that they don’t have a button you press to stop the bus, instead all busdrivers have adopte the same system. It is a doorbell with a piece of string attached to it, running all the way down the us, loosely attached to the roof. You then pull it and the doorbell rings, that way the driver knows that he has to stop. After a lot of bumbling down the roads of Asuncion, we arrived at the terminal, unfortunately for me, I was the only person getting off. And like getting on the bus, the driver only slows down to 10-15 km/h. But when you get on, you are at more or less the same speed (going a it faster to catch up), when you get off, you go from those 10-15 km/h, to a direct stop, and since I had no intention of doing a rolling fall on tarmac, with a huge curb just ahead of me, it looked a lot like the time I crashed my scooter on Easter Island, flying through the air mixed with some running in order not to fall down.

I bought my busticket to Santa Cruz for that same evening (still no idea if they serve food), and had a more leisurely bustrip back to town (after waiting for some 30 minutes), where I further explored the town and had a huge coned 4 scoop ice cream, which did turn out to be quite expensive… And entire euro, for a huge ice cream? Where do they think they are, Buenos Aires? No it was quite alright, I had just become used to everything (except accomodation) being ridiculously cheap, that I was just a big surprised, but was happy to pay. When I get change from the ice cream, it was also my first run-in with the Paraguayan 1000 coin… What a denomination for a coin…. 1000. In fact I had made my souvenir from Paraguay one of their 100.000 notes, which is roughly 14-15 euro, quite a bit for a souvenir down here; but I really love the concept of a 100.000 note, so I didn’t mind

Lunch was quite inextraordinary, but dinner… My dinner was fit for Jehovah (watch Life of Brian), I went back to the Bar San Roque, after I had looked around at some other places without finding something to my taste. Once there I ordered a lasagna bolognese, and oh your god, it was good. When an Italian master chef from Naples thinks of lasagna, what I had is what comes into his mind. Afterwards I went to pick up my bags and the food I had bought at the supermarket, 3 liters of water, 3 packets of crackers, 3 big delicious bread and 2 packets of chocolate biscuits. I had initially hoped to get a lot of apples and bananas, but the two supermarkets I went to, only had rotten fruit, and as I stayed at a hotel, I didn’t have access to a can opener, and neither of the supermarkets would sell me one, which is quite a problem in a country where everything is canned.

I took a bus to the terminal, and luckily there was an old person getting on, since with my huge rucksack, shoulder bag and 3 bags of groceries, I would never have managed to get on at 10-15 km/h. On the other hand, this bus was a joke. If anyone has seen the Harry Potter movie where he takes a bus into London, then you have an idea of what my driver looked like. The bus had an exclusive wooden floor (which was ready to give in), that smelled like a pyre whenever the bus was starting (and it stopped quite a lot), there was no first gear so he had to start the bus in second, which only added to the smell, the roof was so low that I had to walk around hunched over, to fit my rucksack, and to make everything better… My driver started racing with the other drivers.

When I eventually made it to the busterminal, someone asked me at the gate whether I was going to Santa Cruz (I guess, me being foreigner and carrying groceries gave me away), and told me the bus had been canceled but offered me a different company. This sounded an awful lot like what had recently happened to me in Ciudad Del Este, so I at first tried to waft him away, made easier by the fact he didn’t speak English, so I wasn’t sure exactly what he was saying other than my bus was canceled, but he soon showed me what he was saying. He asked for my ticket, which I showed him, and in handwriting (which the lady who sold me the ticket had written) on the ticket was the name of the company he worked for. So reluctantly (with he ticket back in my hand) I followed him. Apparently the bus had been canceled since I was the only person who had bought a ticket, but for free he would transfer me to another company, which belonged to a different company they cooperated with. So from NSA to Yacamota to Rio Paraguay I switched and was taken to a busoffice two blocks from the terminal, where 3 Swedish people were waiting for the bus I had been transferred to. It also soon became obvious that they had forgotten to get an entry stamp into Paraguay, although how that is accomplished remains a mystery to me, did they think they wouldn’t need it? So they had to go and buy one each for 50 USD. In the meantime I was reading aloud from The Odyssey to a Paraguayan child no more than 3-4 years old, who had absolutely no grasp of English, but seemed enthralled by my story.

The 3 Swedes were all from Joenkoppin, although one of them had Chilean parents who had fled Chile under Pinochet’s regime. So despite having traveled for 3 months, the two others had absolutely no grasp of Spanish and understand absolutely nothing (one of them asked what pollo means), as their Chilean/Swedish friend translated absolutely everything, something which was really a shame. Eventually the bus came and we all boarded it. The bus was far from full, so I had two seats to myself, and as this bus is used exclusively for this long distance trip, all the seats could recline very far back, so the light was turned off and I was soon fast asleep.

1st of April:

The main attraction of Ciudad Del Este (other then the market) is the Itaipu dam, the worlds second largest damn (after 3 Gorges dam in China). It produces some 14000 megawatt’s a year, supplies Paraguay with 93% of its power, and Brazil with 25% of their power. It is absolutely freaking huge and awe inspiring. It was built in cooperation between Paraguay and Brazil, during a time where they were both under dictatorships, which unfortunately wasn’t good for the nature. A set of waterfalls (supposedly better than Iguazu) was drowned, species gone extinct as their habitat disappeared (though a lot were saved and relocate by the government) and indigenous people forced to move to other parts of the country.

However the amount of pollution that isn’t done is quite incredible, more or less all of Paraguay and a quarter of Brazil is a huge quantity of oil and coal not burned, in Brazil it works out to be 500.000 barrels of oil not burned every day. So why isn’t 100% of Paraguay powered y this hydroelectric plant? Distant parts of Paraguay (Chaco in particular) are not only distant, but isolated and scarcely populated, so the big power masts simply don’t make it that far).

Because the damn is such a big achievement for a country like Paraguay, the government does anything to promote it. Not only does it feature on their 100.000 guarani (110 DKK or 15 euro), the 30 minutes information movie and guided tour was all free. The nearby nature reserve with a zoo that we didn’t go to is free as well, so they really try everything to get good publicity, in fact the movie we watched was even in English. The movie was quite unintentionally funny due to the whole 80’s trip, everything was made with very poor “futuristic” effects and nobody in the movie would want to be caught wearing those clothes today, not even the geeky engineers.

After the tour, we all headed back to Ciudad Del Este where Dan and I did some shopping, amongst other things, I bought a pair of havaiana flip-flops. This is the first pair of flip-flops that I have ever bought, so why did I do it? Well I went try out walking in flip-flops, always walking in shoes is beginning to get on my nerves; and secondly they cost 35.000 guarani or approx. 38 DKK which is approx. 5 euro. After some shopping, the three of us went out for lunch, and ended up eating at a Chinese place. Once again, the price is essential, I paid 2,5 USD for a giant portion of delicious fried noodles with rice. How they manage it so cheap I don’t know, yes labour costs are lower and so is the price of goods, but still…

The bus terminal was 15 blocks away, we all had a fair deal of luggage and Ciudad Del Este is a rather dangerous place, so we split a cab, and arrived safely. I bought a ticket to Encarnacion and was rushed to the gate as supposedly it would arrive in 5 minutes. Out on the platform I asked the information guy and he told me it would arrive in an hour. As another bus was about to leave for Encarnacion, I tried to get a refund for my ticket and buy one for the other bus. But the salesman said my bus would be along in a few minutes and refused to take my ticket back. I went out on the platform again, and only just then did I find out that the information guy worked for the other bus company, and posed as an information guy in order to lure people into buying his tickets.

Dan and Rommi were heading to Asuncion, the capital of this cute little country. While I was still waiting for my bus, we had a nice little farewell and then they were off. About 5-10 minutes later, my bus came rolling along, I got on and said farewell to Ciudad Del Este, patiently waiting for my bus to get to Encarnacion.

I only have one picture from Ciudad Del Este, I took from inside the bus when the bus was at a small bus stop. Ciudad Del Este is quite dangerous, and so I didn’t feel like brandishing my camera, in fact I never carried anything except a bit of cash. What makes the bus system in Paraguay so very different, is not only the rubbish buses (compared to Chile and Argentina), but at most stops (every major and some minor), people will stand outside your window and shout to heaven about the goods they want to sell you, mainly drinks and edible goods. But those who sell sunglasses, small radios and the like will board the bus and walk up and down the bus, hoping that you buy some of their crap. The ones you really have to watch out for, are the ones trying to sell socks and perfume. They will hold the goods all the way up to your face, and say something along the lines of “Do you want to buy some cocaine?”. In Ciudad Del Este they were everywhere, several to each corner, but they were easy to ignore, you just shook their hands off your arms (they do grab you), but here they have you cornered, and getting rid of them can be quite troublesome.

The rest of the trip was easy though, I just leaned back and continued reading in The Odyssey, a book which I am enjoying more and more, I really have to try and find the Illiad soon. But the sun sets very early in Paraguay (18 o’clock) due to a weird time system (above Argentina, but same timezone as Chile, and summertime just ended), but then again it rises very early (while I’m sleeping). However unlike the nice buses in Argentina and Chile, the buses here don’t have any light on them, so it was soon pitch black, and reading was out of the question. But thankfully my iPod came to my rescue and entertained me (I love my iPod) with a good podcast; I filled my iPod with podcasts before I left home.

I arrived in Encarnacion around 21 o’clock and was at my hotel within minutes, Hotel Germano which the Lonely Planet not only describes as the best value in town and “neater than a Japanese origami figure”. I ate some cheap dinner at a terminal restaurant and went to bed shortly after, with great expectations of the day to come. Just like in Ciudad Del Este this is a hotel run by members of the German speaking minority. When I inquired the owner about the buses to Trinindad (my activity for the following day), he offered to help me in German, which I at first tried out but quickly went back to Spanish, this was the first time where I had been better at Spanish than German. I had previously on my trip met German speakers and spoken a bit of German with them, but this really is testament to my ever improving Spanish (although my German is quite poor to begin with).

I didn’t really explain the German population yesterday, so here it is. The Mennonites (as they are called) were Canadian Germans that were invited to Paraguay seeking more religious freedom (wasn’t that the point of North America to begin with?), where they initially settled in Chaco, and horribly underpopulated part of Paraguay following the Chaco war (1932-1935) which followed the war of The Triple Alliance (1865-1870) where half the population of Paraguay perished together with 26% of the country. The first war hurt the Chaco region especially, and the Chaco war finished off most that had survived. However the Germans had arrived in Chaco before the Chaco war, which might explain why Paraguay won that war despite being vastly outnumbered.

However the Germans were offered to live in Chaco as nobody else could grow anything there, however the Germans succeeded, and today they make out the wealthy upper-class. So whenever you see a nice car, it’s a German speaking person driving. Even in some of the small towns I make it through, they have a Mercedes Benz dealership; and naturally they have hotels all over the country, which I stay at (they are nice, and cheap).

2nd of April:

I woke up quite late (10 o’clock), but that had no chance of deterring me, I found a supermarket and bought 5 apples, 5 pieces of bread, some sliced ham and a bar of chocolate. The supermarket was under a heavy German influence, but still didn’t manage to have knoppers or any kind of Haribo I like (they only had Piratos). On the way back I came past the German consulate, but all the way back at the bus terminal, I caught a bus to Trinidad, the worlds least visited UNESCO World Heritage site. It is a Jesuit ruin that was left to crumble in 1767 when the Jesuits were expelled from Paraguay. The site is… different. Anywhere else in South America (or the world really), this place would be overrun by tourists, every single historic square millimeter would be fenced and out of bounds.

But I was allowed to wander freely about (I was the only visitor), walked all around the ruins, inside the church, down into the crypt, climbed the stairs inside the church to get a better view, you could do anything that didn’t directly damage the ruins (although it didn’t say that anywhere); so I sat down in one of the Indian housing ruins and ate my ham sandwiches. The only damage (and sign of human recent life) is the few chains blocking you from entering places that would collapse if you entered (no, really) and the carvings left by other guests in the rocks. I hate it when it can be removed, but when it is permanently destroying something this fantastic, I detest and despise the very persons who did it. However I was soon intrigued by all the carvings, a lot of them were up to 50 years old, and I even found some left there in the 1920’s and 1930’s, that was… Different. It doesn’t justify the destruction, but it is interesting, especially since I found the carvings of someone who had been there, the exact same day as me, just in 1947.

After having seen Trinidad (which means Trinity in Spanish) I went back out to the main road and took a right (left leads back to Encarnacion), walked 80 meters to the sign to Jesus, another Jesuit run, just some 12 km away (Trinidad is 30 km from Encarnacion). However the bus only comes every 2 hours, and I had no idea when it had last come by. Next to the turnoff there was a man who offered to take me there, wait for 30 minutes and take me back for 20.000 guarani. I first thought about waiting for the bus, it would be cheaper. But the guy had the biggest mullet in the world, so I accepted his offer and climbed onto his motorbike.

The trip to Jesus, is one I hope I won’t soon forget. The road was sort of a rough cobbled off road (that’s very bad), on a motorbike with no suspension or upholstering (VERY bad), which was making bad sounds (getting even worse) until the side of it (literally) fell off (does it get any worse?) and the battery and parts of the engine fell out (yes it does). That however didn’t deter my big-mulleted driver, who was whistling a happy tune while he picked up the parts (I helped), went back to his bike, knocked them back in approx. where they belonged, ripped some wire from another place to tie it in with, put the sidecover back on, and unsuccessfully fired up the engine. So he took the side off, hit some more on the engine, pulled the wires a bit more, but the side cover on and the engine fired up again. So I wearily climbed back on and we were off again.

Jesus is a different kind of ruin, it isn’t as big and impressive but it is in a much better condition, over the course of time, stones had been taken from Trinidad and used in houses etc. in other places, and some parts had crumbled (the same thing even happened to the Colosseum). But Jesus had been saved from that fate, quite possibly due to its far more remote location, the only thing that was really missing, was inventory (anything loose had long ago been taken/stolen) and the roof. Unlike what I thought, I didn’t even need the 30 minutes there (I spent 25 minutes), so after having seen all of Jesus, I (carefully) climbed back onto the motorbike, and hit up the 12km back to the main road, where I had to wait for 40 minutes or so, before a bus stopped and took me back to Encarnacion.

By now it had gotten quite late, so after some reading, I headed up to eat. On the way I came by an orthodox church which puzzled me quite a lot in a strictly catholic country. But apparently some of the Germans had come from Ukraine (really), and set up their own church. But despite the church I found a nice little place and ordered a delicious lasagna. As I was about to eat my first spoon, an inanely loud sound started pulsing… The presidential election is coming up, and the campaigning is in its highest gear, and Lista 1, though the best way to get voters is to put stickers on cars and play music so loud my eardrums almost blew next to a restaurant. So the restaurant closed all doors and windows, and turned on the air condition, which did quite a lot to help.

Having eaten, I went back to the hotel, wrote in my travel journal and read in The Odyssey, before asking the hotel owner about bus times to Asunción on the following day. So I decided on a 7.30 bus, and went to bed.

Getting to Paraguay proved a lot harder, then I had initially thought. I had hoped to get the 9 o’clock bus to Ciudad Del Este, which would drive straight through Brazil, so that I wouldn’t have to get off and do the border formalities. However I woke up at 9.40, and thus was unable to make that bus, and wasn’t bothered to get the 10 o’clock bus, as I would have to hurry a lot. So I took it easy, ate the bread there was for breakfast at the hostel.

I checked out and went down to the Terminal to get my 11 o’clock bus, boarded it and paid my 3 pesos, and so it set off. I got stamped out of Argentina, went back on board the bus and got dumped off in Brazil? That wasn’t to plan, but there wasn’t much to do about it. The busdriver told us (I got off together with an English guy, German girl and an Argentinian girl) that another bus would be along in 20 minutes. So we all got our Brazilian entry stamps. Back at the bus stop, nothing happened. 20 minutes passed, then 30, 40, 50, 1 hour had gone by and still no bus. The German girl was getting extremely impatient and kept muttering to herself as she had wanted to catch a bus from Ciudad Del Este to Santa Cruz (Bolivia). So when a bus finally came, it wasn’t with out company, so we couldn’t get on it. The German girl just bought a new ticket from the bus driver and was off.

In hindsight, I would have gotten on the bus with her, but I had no idea that the bus would never come along… After a little while, the 2 Danish girls I had met the previous day came along, waited for their bus (they were only going to Foz de Iguacu (the Brazilian town) and left. They were followed by 2 Swedish girls who did the same. So eventually I got to know the people I were waiting with quite well. Daniel (Dan) from England and his girlfriend Rommi from Cordoba (Argentina, not Spain), who were out traveling until Dan had to go back to England again (a week later). We talked especially a lot about our bus, and whether or not it would actually come. So after 2 hours and 40 minutes, we had just had enough. We got very upset with out bus company NSA (Never Stops Anywhere) and took a taxi, it was 60 peso all the way to Ciudad Del Este, a lot more expensive than the bus, but then the bus never came.

Leaving Brazil was easy enough, there was no queue, we just got our stamps and drove across the international Friendship bridge, a bride you should never walk across, unless you don’t care about being mugged. On the other side we did our border formalities, got a very beautiful stamp in my passport and located our hotel, which our driver offered to take us to for free. The hotel was in the Lonely Planet guide listed as 13 dollars for a single room, but upon arrival it turned out to be a 35 dollar room. So Dan and Rommi offered to share a triple room with me, which brought the price down to a much more sensible. Had the final price been 35 dollars, I would have found another place. But 15 dollars was acceptable, especially since it was a nice hotel (Hotel Munich), and in Ciudad Del Este, you don’t want to scrimp. There are plenty of very cheap places, but there are even more dodgy places with absolutely no security.

Dan and Rommi had initially hoped to go to the Itaipu dam, but unfortunately it was too late for that trip, so we walked around Ciudad Del Este, an enormous cheap electronics market… My kind of place. For lunch Dan had read about a Lebanese place in the Lonely Planet guide, unfortunately it was nowhere to be found, so instead we went into a mini-market next to a mosque, and asked. The owner didn’t know of it, but he was Lebanese and his uncle owned a restaurant not far away, so he had his little brother take us there. Without him we would never have found it, in fact, without the little brother we would never have entered the building, found our way to the second floor and sat down there. The place (not the restaurant) looked extremely dodgy and ready to collapse, the restaurant itself was a kitchen with 1 table and 4 chairs, but the food… The food was fantastic; this was one of those places where locals come, and it stays local, because they don’t want to share the gorgeous food. I had a sort of roll with minced lamb and assorted vegetables in it, part of which tasted like some vegetarian meat replacement, which I had once tasted in Amsterdam at a shawarma place (not surprising).

We went back to the hotel and relaxed as there wasn’t much to do, the market was beginning to close, and that really is all there is. So we settled down, Dan and I talked while Rommi slept. Once it was late, Dan and I went out looking for dining places that weren’t too expensive. We eventually found a nice place, so we went back to the hostel, found that Rommi was awake and went out to eat dinner. I had a wonderful lasagna, Rommi the same an Dan had a really good looking Paraguayan fish.