Long Weekend Trip

Last weekend I had the chance to see a little more of Paraguay and get a better taste for her culture and form. The 9th and 10th grades went on a two and a half day trip to see several sights in areas of the country about six hours east of Asuncion. I was privileged to go along on the secure but tiring excursion with all the excited youth.

We left around midnight last Thursday. Lucky for me, the sickness I felt in my stomach from a bad lunch of tepid fruit-smoothie was no indication of how the rest of the weekend would end up. We boarded our bus, which to my grand surprise was a huge air-conditioned Brazilian affair with twice the space for reclining than any of the airlines I traveled on to get here. With my pillow in hand and ear plugs in ears, I drifted off to sleep.

Around 5:30 in the morning I was awakened to breakfast time. Our bus was stopping at one of the most-famous Chiparrias in Paraguay to enjoy an early morning bite to eat. Chipa, one of the national foods here, is a bagel-like snack whose dough is baked warm with cheese and is sold everywhere. Women with chipa baskets on their hips or heads enter public buses all the time to sell it, and countless roadside stands feed weary travelers with it.

We stopped at a place that was supposed to sell the best chipa in all of Paraguay. There was a bathroom there, too, that had a guard posted outside who carried what looked like an elephant gun. I felt much better knowing that we were all safe from stampeding herds of giant mammals as we ate fresh chipa and drank hot cocido, a drink like sweet creamy coffee made from charred yerba mate.

Along with the guard were several middle-aged ladies selling chipa at this most famous chipa stand. They wore robin-egg blue form-fitting outfits and reminded me of airline stewardesses. From what I heard, the chipa vendor has a coveted job here, selling a flavor of national culinary pride and making good business while doing it. I thought the stop was a delicious piece of Paraguayan cultural pie.

We traveled some more and I slept another two hours all the way to Brazil, where we stopped at Tres Fronteras. The tourist spot, called Three Frontiers in English, is the place where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay all three meet in a grand panorama and where can be seen two rivers flowing into one another with an ancient embrace. It was exciting because it was the first real photo opportunity, and I learned there that Paraguayans have a little jingle they sing when they want or are having a picture taken. It goes something like this: “FOH-toh, FOH-toh, FOH-toh.” All through the trip, I took plenty of FOH-tohs.

By mid-morning we’d reached Iguazu Falls. I’m pretty sure these falls are, water quantity-wise, the largest in the world. Even in a time of drought like now, their size supposedly dwarfs Niagara Falls (although, in my own mind, they were no more impressive than their North American counterparts. The nice thing about Iguazu that is different than Niagara, however, is that the former is set in the midst of a largely unspoiled jungle. The Brazilian government has set up just enough amenities and tourist huts to make the visit comfortable for the foreigner, but not enough to spoil the natural serenity or beauty of the surrounding tropical landscape). I’m not sure how I could have come to any other conclusion than to say that they were really beautiful, really big, and pretty impressive.

One thing I remember more distinctly than the waterfalls were the millipedes – giant South American ones the size of your face – crawling everywhere on the footpaths. People naturally stepped all over the path and the millipedes, smooshing the creatures into the ground. I could tell the ones that had died recently, as they were still round and fleshly, apart from the ones that had died much earlier, which were only skeletons and dried out. At some point the dead ones seem to have become part of the cement walkway, leaving their imprints like very ancient fossils.

For lunch on Friday we visited a Brazilian buffet. The food was abundant and, in my opinion, very tasty. There were savory gobs of various meats, served fresh off of long roasting rods, along with plenty of South American salads and treats. We washed it all down with Coca Cola, the drink de force of the weekend and of good times in Paraguay.

Friday afternoon we visited Itapu, the site of the world’s largest man-made dam. Built under a Paraguayan dictator a few decades ago with Brazilian financing, the dam is a testament to man’s ability to harness nature’s forces. Nearly a dozen and a half giant turbines slowly let filter through the great waters of the now stopped-up Parana, the fourth largest river flow in the world, creating enough electricity in just one and a half turbines to supply all of Paraguay’s needs. The rest is sent to Brazil. Money from the dam is used in building projects and public services all over Paraguay, with a large part of it also going into the private coffers of high-ranking political officials and friends of the state.

Friday night we stayed at a beautiful campground on the shores of the great lake created by Itapu Dam. The stay was completely free for our school group, financed as a gift and pacifier to the Paraguayan people by the dam proprietors and government. It was a scenic paradise where we had the chance to enjoy a ride through the jungle in horse-drawn carriage in the daytime and see the massive ginger moon rise up out of the dark waters in the nighttime. The perfect setting, along with a massive grilled meat dinner served by the school’s director and pastor, made our stay entirely wonderful and a highlight of the trip.

Saturday we woke bright and early to enjoy some more of the campground. We left mid-morning for Ciudad del Este, a shopper’s paradise filled with the newest and cheapest electronic goods, the most fashionable and imitated sports gear, and the most impressive and blackest of all markets I’ve ever seen. It was a dream-come-true of materialistic sensationalism, with shop after shop and seller after seller pawning their worldly wares. I was completely overwhelmed by the scene and unable to process anything. With all the frenzied purchasing activity going on around me and my own explainable fears of losing everything in my pockets, I was glad we only had an hour to stay. Even though I needed an alarm clock, I decided not to purchase anything in this great “City of the East” (Ciudad del Este) and left with my pockets still burdened by Paraguayan cash.

Saturday afternoon, we visited another waterfall and then spent the remainder of the day at the AC Church outside of Ciudad del Este playing bocce ball and eating roast chicken. We returned in the evening to Itapu, where we saw an over-hyped light and sound show as the dam slowly and un-dramatically turned on its fluorescent nightlights. After another stop at the church, we headed back to our air-conditioned bus for a night trip back to Asuncion. All in all, the excursion was a grand adventure in the safety of a school field trip and gave us all the chance to see, hear, and smell some of Paraguay’s greatest secret treasures.