The end is near...

...well, the end of our trip is near. We arrived in Asuncion this evening without too much confusion or delay, despite the darkness, the lack of clear road signs, and the weird driving habits of the locals. We fly out tomorrow evening but I wanted to make sure we got here to avoid any unforeseen circumstances that might prevent us from getting to the airport on time. We could walk to the airport now. It would be a long walk, but we could do it if we had to.

We are staying at the beautiful Portal del Sol Hotel here in Asuncion. It´s a really nice place and the price is very reasonable. I would recommend making reservations as both times I´ve been here, we´ve been very lucky to get a room.

I had another Trans Chaco Rally moment on Sunday. We went out to Potrero Guazu for a final visit. It had rained on Friday and the road was in decent shape on the heavily used parts. We stayed late and headed back to Caazapa in the dark. Now, the road is a bit of a challenge to drive in daylight to avoid the worst parts. At night it´s a lot more difficult. The headlights cause shadows or hide ruts making it even more challenging. Throw in the fact that the not-so-used parts of the road are difficult to judge for driveablilty and you´re asking for trouble. Well I found it. A car was approaching in the other direction and I had to get back on my own side of the road. In this case it was the unused part of the road. It was rutted but look passable...in the dark. We got sucked over to the farthest right side of the road and just sank. Fortunately I was able to go back and forth a bit until I was able to get back on to solid road. The little Daewoo pulled through!

Lourdes hasn´t been feeling well. She started with the standard runny nose, cough and a low fever just after Easter. Somehow we didn´t bring enough Little Colds multisymptom medicine with us and we had to buy some medicine here. It doesn´t taste very good and it´s a battle to get some down her. I´m not sure how effective it´s been. She improved, but not for long. She had a bloody nose yesterday evening and that was a little puzzling. I have to assume that with all the activity she´s had in her nose (runny nose, blowing the nose, picking the nose) that it just couldn´t take the abuse any longer. Other than being runny, her nose has been fine today. I think she may have strep or some virus as she has had a sore throat and has a couple sores in her mouth. The pharmacy reccomended an antibiotic (although if it´s a virus, the antibiotic won´t do any good) so hopefully she will show some improvement by tomorrow evening´s flight. I´m not sure what time we get home on Wednesday, but I´m sure it will be too late to get her to the pediatrician. Poor baby.

The Rivermen are in the first round of the playoffs and aren´t doing very well. They´re down 3-0 in a best-of-seven series. They play again Wednesday. I´m going to try and get to the game, might be the last of the season.

I don´t plan on posting on Tuesday, but I might do so to kill some time as our flight is in the evening. Regardless, once back in the states, I´ll probably have a bunch of catching up to do so don´t expect a post for at least a couple of days. I know, Greg and Deb will say that I´ll fall back into obscurity as far as posting is concerned, but we´ll see. I´ve got lots of pictures that I want to go through so keep an eye on the flickr.

Ciao for now!

Trans Chaco Rally x 2 (cont)

Raquel´s sister Abrelia had come home for Easter. Two of her sons live in Caazapa to go to school. She brought her two youngest daughters with her. I had never met Abrelia before because she lives way off the beaten path. It seems Abrelia got married and went away when Raquel was really young and so they have rarely seen each other. Needless to say, it was a nice reunion.

In fact, it was quite the family reunion. Veneria was the only missing. She went to Brazil in 2002 with her boyfriend and hasn´t come back yet. Avelino made it in from Asuncion. He took the bus as far as he could, then had to walk hours and hours in the dark, without a light to get to Potrero Guazu at about 2AM. I don´t think I could do that. Crispin lives fairly close by so he was able to make it. Diosnel lives in Potrero. Lourdes (the sister) still lives at home, and we took Juaquina. After the fact, I realized I didn´t take a picture!

So after Easter, Abrelia and her daughters Maria and Pricila made their way to Caazapa. I believe a relative gave them a ride. We decided we would take them on home. One of my brothers-in-law cautioned against going in the Daewoo. He said there was too much red dirt road to make it out there in the car, that it sat too low and that the roads were in bad shape, worse than going to Potrero Guazu. Abrelia and my nephews said that the road was in good shape, better than going to Potrero.

So off we went in the little Daewoo. Just me, the two woman, and three girls all under eight. No cell phone. No map. Of course from Caazapa to Caaguazu was all paved and we arrived in good time, about an hour and a half with a short stop in Villarica to raid the ATM. In Caaguazu, we made a potty break, filled up the Daewoo, and started down the dirt road. I remember asking how far it was to Abrelia´s house. She responded through Raquel something about 80 kilometers. The road wasn´t too bad, especially by Paraguayan standards. We were probably averaging about 45 kph, so I thought we would be there in no time. Did I mention that it had rained very hard three or four days prior to this trip? Well actually that didn´t really seem to come into play until after about 50 km on the dirt road. The road was really decent until we hit a long stretch of what was pretty much sand that probably was about 1.5 feet deep. By the time I realized that we were in the middle of it and losing traction, it was too late. The car just stopped. It wouldn´t go backward or forwards. We were perched on the center and the wheel ruts on either side were just too deep. Great! We were in the middle of nowhere and had no real options. There was a house close by, so Abrelia went to ask about borrowing a shovel or some implement to maybe dig ourselves out but there was nobody there with authority to lend anything out. We were still freshly stuck and were pondering what to do when a Nissan Pathfinder (or something similiar) came around the corner. There were three young men in it and they agreed to try and help us. First we tried pushing by hand but it wouldn´t budge. Finally the guy got some rope out of his vehicle and tried pulling us out backwards from the sand pit. No luck. Several motorcycles and a couple of four-wheel-drive trucks went by. The young man who was helping us changed tactics. He hitched up to the front of the Daewoo and quite easily got us to firm ground. In the mean time an old large farm type truck tried to make it through and also got stuck. I think the truck was too old and underpowered to get through, because it definitely had the clearance. The guys that were in it were well prepared as they got out and each had a shovel to dig themselves out. So we thanked our rescuers and offered them a couple of bucks for their kindness, but they refused saying to give the money to the poor.

Okay so we had our little setback. We were guaranteed that the rest of the way would not present any problems except that a bridge along the way was in poor shape. We went a little further and stopped in a little town to eat and pick up some supplies for Abrelia´s family. That took a little longer than I wanted but thought that it was no big deal because we only had a few kilometers left to go. We finally hit 80 km distance travelled. Abrelia said we still had a long way to go. Hmmm. We continued on. And on. And on. Finally at the 120 km mark, we made it. I think there was a slight gap in communications on the distance we needed to go. I guess Abrelia had actually said that her town was 80 km from another town along the way. Anyway, we made it and her family was glad to have her back.

We went with the intention of spending the night. When we were making good time and the distance was thought to be substantially shorter, I had started to think that maybe we would be able to get there, visit a little while and return to the paved road all before dark. The reality was that we didn´t get there until between 3 and 4 and that there was no way to visit, leave and make it back to Caaguazu before dark and then go on to Caazapa.

My brother-in-law Rosalino is a very nice man. He greeted us warmly and made us feel very welcome. Lourdes and I went with him to get some mandioca. He hitched up a small cart to a horse and off we went. Lourdes loved it. She couldn´t stop grinning. Rosalino and I talked about his land, how he used to make charcoal from wood in a big oven but it was too much work and besides the oven collapsed. His primary use of the land is to grow herba. Apparently, the leaves of this tree are harvested, dried, cut, and sold to make a sort of tea. So we got to where the mandioca was. Rosalino made short work of cutting the plant with his machete and pulling the roots out. Lourdes helped carry the mandioca back to the horse cart. We climbed in and made our way back to the house. Again Lourdes was in heaven. Along the way, the horse let out some gas. Lourdes mixed her english with her spanish and said ¨horsey pedo¨.

Abrelia and Rosalino live way out in the middle of nowhere. I don´t even know the name of the little town (if you can call it a town). It turned dark and we had duck for supper and by 8 we were getting ready for bed. Raquel and I were outside brushing our teeth and I was astounded by the stars in the sky. It´s very difficult to find a place near my house where the night sky doesn´t prevent you from seeing the stars clearly. The sky was clear and I could see every star, not just the bigger brighter ones. It was amazingly beautiful. I wish I knew more about astrology, I mean astronomy.

We made it home the next day without incident. Abrelia was very proud that we stayed with them since we´ve never stayed with Juaquina or at the parent´s house.

Time for now. We´ll be arriving home next Wednesday. If anything else comes up, I´ll try to post.

Trans Chaco Rally x 2

I was out of touch for a short while. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of Holy Week we went to the in-law´s house. We didn´t spend the night there but I didn´t have the chance to make it to the Internet Cafe to post any updates, then it was closed on Saturday and Sunday. Monday and Tuesday were travel days to visit a sister-in-law´s house far, far away.

The family tradition here for Holy Week is to get together and make chipas for the Friday when they can´t eat meat. So Wednesday they made hundreds of chipas and Thursday they all got together to grill chancho. Okay, I don´t know how to describe a chipa, but I´ll try. A chipa is made from corn-meal and made into little cakes and bagels and baked in an oven. The oven is a round earthen oven that is superheated by burning wood inside. All the ashes and wood are removed and then the cakes get cooked from the heat that built up. Chancho is pork.

On Good Friday, we were out in the country again and it looked like rain. To me, it looked like rain before we went and the whole time we were there it looked like it was going to rain. Finally, we decided we better hit the road before we ran into the rain. The reason it´s so important to beat the rain is because of the 40 plus kilometers of dirt road that is in pretty bad shape without rain and becomes a quagmire when wet. Well, we didn´t beat the rain. It came down hard. I couldn´t see a foot in front of the car in most places. We crept along slowly, trying to stay out of the worst parts of the road and making sure we didn´t hit anybody or anything. We decide to continue to Boqueron which is about two-thirds of the way to Caazapa. The road to that point had lots of rocks so we weren´t too worried about getting stuck. We safeley made it to Boqueron and the rain, correction, the downpour subsided. My brother-in-law said we should be okay to make it to Caazapa if we continued. If we waited, the road would really soak up the water and be impassable. Off we went. The going wasn´t too bad and as we got close to Caazapa, we came upon a four-wheel drive vehicle. It was going much slower than me but I couldn´t risk passing it because there wasn´t a good place to pass. I slowed down and stayed behind it. The closer we got to Caazapa, the sloppier the road became. The vehicle in front was creating a nice rut for me to follow in and we were doing well. Then we encountered a long rut that was full of water. Too full. The car, a Daewoo something, sputtered to a stop in the water. It wasn´t too deep, just deep enough that with our momentum, the engine got doused and died. It wouldn´t start. We waited and tried to start it. No luck. It was acting as if the battery was dead. We waited and waited and tried again still with no success. After about thirty minutes or more, it finally started and we were on our way. We made it to Caazapa. The little Daewoo came through.

Well I better go for now. I´ll try and continue on later.

Sir, your Armani suits have arrived.

If I forgot to say so in an earlier post, our baggage arrived in Asuncion Saturday afternoon. Our rental car agent was able to retrieve them and put them on a bus to Caazapa. We got them that night at midnight and it seems as though everything arrived in good condition. Gracias a Rene Palacios de Sudamerica Rent-a-car!

Stampede, Sunday Bingo, Pikivoli and Attack of the Killer Chicken

I tried to blog yesterday but the connection here was really slow for some reason. Today it´s going reasonable fast so I thought I would catch up. I´m blogging from an internet cafe in Caazapa. It was here last year but was terribly slow so I only used it once. I hear there are a couple of other internet connections here but I haven´t tried to find them yet.

For Deb: Our neighbor is looking after the cat and dogs at home. She´s been a terrific help in the past and we´re lucky to live next to such great people.

We´ve been out to Potrero Guazu several times and Lourdes loves being outside in the warm weather and the family loves spending time with her. On one of the trips, we stopped to visit a relative and we were parked in the street talking to a couple of aunts. An uncle was nearby trying to corral some cows. It seems that one of the ex-bulls was a little randy and wanted to fool around a little and was after some of the cows. In the process of keeping the peace, a mini stampede came our way. Nobody got hurt and there probably wasn´t much danger but it´s still unsettling to have a large, determined bovine headed your way.

We also got to play bingo. I didn´t really come close to winning anything, but my nephew won an entire fried chicken so lunch was free. I think everyone enjoyed playing. My nephew also came close to winning the final grand prize of 300,000 Guaranis in a blackout game. The rate is currently just under 1 to 6000, so it was roughly $50. He didn´t win but there were some anxious moments as a couple of people thought they had the entire board covered only to find out that they didn´t so there was a second and third chance.

Later I went back with a brother-in-law and a nephew to watch pikivoli. Pikivoli is similar to volleyball in that you play with a volleyball and play on a volleyball court (in this case grass), but you can´t use your hands. The players must only use their chests, head and feet to play. I´m not sure which is more popular here, futbol (soccer) or pikivoli. It was pretty entertaining to watch and there were some pretty talented players. Raquel said that kids grow up playing pikivoli and it was obvious. I wouldn´t mind trying it sometime but I think it would be difficult for me since I can´t see very well without my glasses. I would also be at a real disadvantage since I have no talent at this sort of thing. Maybe someday I´ll have corrected vision and be able to give it a shot.

Last thing and I´m going to go. Lourdes loves all the animals out here and has no fear of them. At her grandma´s house she got to chase chickens all day with no problems. However when we went to visit an aunt, a rooster took exception to someone trying to grab one of its kin. Poor Lourdes ended up with a couple of welts/scratches on the back of her leg. She didn´t cry or at least didn´t cry much and said "chicken bad girl" and still has no fear of the animals.

Ciao for now!

Fish soup and spaghetti with beans

It´s Saturday and my Armani suits still have not arrived. I have an insurance policy for this vacation and after what seemed like no results from the airline that brought us here, I decided to call the policy´s Travel Advisor or Travel Assistant or whatever they call themselves. They allow you to call collect. FYI to make a collect call from Caazapa, Paraguay to the US, dial 0012. Let me backtrack a moment. We flew from home to Chicago and then to Miami on an AMERICAN AIRLINE whose name shall remain anonymous so that I am not libel or committing libel or whatever you say when you write something bad about a person or company. From Miami to Sao Paulo, Brazil and on to Asuncion, Paraguay, we flew on a non-AMERICAN carrier. The folks in Asuncion tried but didn´t seem to get any help or response from the American Airline.

My travel insurance dude connected me to the American Airline and stayed on the line to help me. The lady at the American Airline was not very cooperative or helpful at first. I didn´t have the baggage claim tickets with me because we left them in Asuncion with our rental car agent. Our rental car agent is going to claim our bags and put them on a bus so that they get to us eventually. So the lady on the phone from the American Airline said she couldn´t help us if we didn´t have the baggage claim tickets because otherwise she just had a blank computer screen. Even though I wanted to reach through the phone line and strangle her with her own headset, I managed to stay calm. I explained to her a little of what happened and she miraculously was able to search recent claims by my last name and found out that the bags were still in Chicago and that they were scheduled to go out that afternoon with a possible arrival in Asuncion on Saturday afternoon. I then asked that if they didn´t arrive on Saturday, and I call back, would they be able to tell me with certainty that the bags left Chicago. She said she couldn´t because they would be transferred to another non American Airline once they arrived in Miami. I couldn´t get it through her thick skull that I was not concerned about the other carrier, that I wanted to be able to know if the bags left Chicago. Finally she relented that superivisors could do a sort of world trace that goes beyond the American Airline and might be able to help me with that. Geez! I think there have been terrorists who have given more information with less prodding than this lady. Afterwards my travel insurance dude said that now that we have the baggage claim numbers again, he will be able to help us track the luggage if it doesn´t arrive.

Our drive to Caazapa in our rental car was a bit of a mess. We were given directions from our hotel to get to the ¨ruta¨ but the lack of clear street signs or road signs or city signs got us all kinds of mixed up. Raquel doesn´t know the way, and the last time I drove, my brother-in-law was the navigator. We got really good directions from a gentleman who was waiting for his wife/girlfriend/sister/friend. Those directions got us to a fork of two rutas. I don´t know why, but I got my thinking all screwed up and took the wrong ruta. By the time we found out we were headed in the wrong direction, we had travelled a good ways out of the way. Fortunately we were given some good directions on a short cut to get us back on the correct ruta.

So we´ve been in Caazapa a couple of days now and Lourdes loves being out in the nice weather playing with her family, chasing chickens, and showing off how cute she is. The food has been pretty good over all. The meat is usually a little tough, but tolerable. We had a couple of traditional meals to include a fish soup one time and spaghetti with beans another time. They were both quite good, the only complaint about the fish soup would be the tiny bones that are inherent in certain fish and the fact that the skin was left on it.

Time to go.

Lost in Translation

Day 2 in Paraguay. Still no luggage. We were advised this morning that it was in Brazil and would arrive this afternoon on another airline. We called again and it seems that our stuff is still in Chicago. I don´t know why it´s in Chicago when we were told that it was in Brazil. Maybe it went to Brazil and back to Chicago. I don´t know. Don´t know when it´s going to arrive. The airline said we have to claim it when it arrives so it can go through customs or we can designate someone and they can claim it, go through customs with it, and send it on to us.

After finding out that our stuff isn´t here and there´s no guarantee it will arrive, we´ve decided to rent a car so we can get to Caazapa and back at our pace instead of relying on the bus.

I´ll post when I can.

Blogging in Spanish

I´m blogging from Asuncion, Paraguay tonight. We are spending the night here at the Hotel Portal del Sol instead of going on out to Caazapa. The in-laws don´t know we are in country or that we are even coming.

It´s been a long trip so far and not has gone smoothly. Our first flight was delayed due to bad weather in Chicago causing us to miss our connection in Chicago. Fortunately there was another flight departing about the time we got to Chicago so we were switched to that one. The flight out of Miami wasn´t delayed significantly but we had to wait in line to get our boarding passes reviewed. We were late getting out of Sao Paulo, Brazil, but it didn´t matter because we didn´t have anyone waiting for us.

The biggest problem so far has been that our luggage is still in Chicago. We went shopping this evening at the Shopping del Sol and that was a trippy experience that makes me appreciate shopping at home. First, if you find something you like, they take it away to the counter and do up a ticket while you continue shopping. They give you a copy of the ticket and when you´re ready to check out, you present your ticket(s) to the cashier. She then rings it all up and you pay. She then stamps all your tickets and gives them back to you. You then give your tickets to another person and that person collects all the items (already grouped together by ticket) and compares your ticket(s) with the ticket(s) of all the items already ticketed and bagged. She removes the ticket(s) that are on the bag, puts your stamped ticket on the bag and then she stamps the tickets she removed from the bag. After all the ticket exchanging and stamping is over, you are free to leave with your hard-earned purchases.

I will never complain about shopping in the US again.