On Monday the 9th of August, Tim, Shola and I took a night bus from Asuncion to Concepcion to take a boat heading to Bahia Negra, the Northern tip of Paraguay. The previous Friday we swore out as Peace Corps Volunteers and became unemployed. That weekend goodbyes were said, hammocks were sent home and heavy drinking was had. Sunday gave us time to continue the bag purging process, eat our last empanadas and have a last look at Asuncion.
Matias and I watching Dora the Explorer during my last visit to Tacuati.
The Aquidaban
For 80 bucks we rented a small cabin for the three nights it would take to reach Bahia Negra. The boat was cosy and gave us just enough room to jam all our huge bags inside. We got lucky and took the cabin of a family that never showed up. If that family had shown up we would have camped out in the hallways, aggressively trying to claim floor and/or hammock space. My body alone requires the space sufficient for a small Paraguayan family.
This thing was packed with cargo.
Paraguayan concrete!
The Aquidaban supplies Alto Paraguay with a large quantity of its produce and supplies. The boat is lively and constantly moving with people who are coming and going, loading and unloading crates of fruit, vegetables, flour, rice, milk, eggs, yogurt, bread, beer, coke, concrete, motorcycles, gasoline, baskets, cooking oil, furniture and animals. Most of the Paraguayans wanted to know what the hell we were doing and where we were heading off to work. We shared terere and talked about our time as volunteers. When I wasn't feeling lazy I helped unload heavy objects. It was my last chance to use the 13 words of Guarani I picked up during the last two years. It was a nice, slow departure from Paraguay.
Tim trying to get organized in our room.
One of the several ports we stopped at to load and unload cargo. In this particular town the people are Chamacoco or Ishiro, not Guarani. The Chamacocos we talked to spoke Chamacoco, Guarani, Spanish and Portuguese.
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I watched an 80 year old women carry sacks of iron rock up and down these planks.
The first or last town along the Rio Paraguay in Paraguay, depending on where you are coming from. Gotta jump to that.
Me, Bob (PCV), Rob, Michelle (PCV), Aurelio, Andreas, Tim
Bird watching at the Biological Station Los Tres Gigantes. I'd say I saw about 50 toucans.
Stuck in weeds in the Pantanal
Our guide Don Aliche and Shola. We took this boat from Bahia Negra to Puerto Bosch, Bolivia. During the three hour boat ride we saw birds, carpinchos, caimans, storks, toucans and a even a few monkeys.
Giant Anteater
Somewhere in there are a @!#@ ton of Caiman, mouths open, basking in the sun.
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