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.
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