In case you missed yesterday’s blog post, there wasn’t one. I didn’t do anything overly interesting other than wander around the downtown and arrange some things to do.
This morning, I had breakfast with a German couple who are spending three weeks in South America. They were very interesting, and we shared some travel tips and they taught me a couple German words.
After breakfast, I took my first city bus in South America, and what a ride! These things fly through town, barely stop to pick people up and drop them off, and cost next to nothing to get from one end of town to the other. You also have to be careful which bus you take because the 1A and the 1B go on completely different routes, for example. Along the way, the bus picks up various street vendors who try to sell their wares, be it a song, a coca cola or a tube of toothpaste. Very enjoyable.
The main reason for my bus ride was to get to the Asuncion Botanical Gardens and Zoo. As it turns out, it is quite a large place with many kilometres of trails, a natural history museum, gardens (of course), trees and a zoo. The entire place was very sparsely populated with visitors which meant for a very quiet and relaxing morning and afternoon.
The first stop was the natural history museum where Carmen took it upon herself to give me a personal tour. She spoke next to no English, so I managed to communicate with her and shared some English names for the stuffed and bottled animals we were viewing. After a little while learning some names for animals in Paraguay (and elsewhere; for example, the lion isn’t native to Paraguay, but they had a stuffed one), I thanked Carmen for the tour and we exchanged our encantados/as and I proceeded to the zoo.
Now, I haven’t been to a zoo in many years, but I seem to recall horrid places with too many people, $5 bottles of water, cement enclosures for obviously stressed out bears, and next to no shade for the visitors. Now, before I tell you what the Asuncion Zoo is like, here is a primer on the Spanish names for the animals in this zoo.
As you may have guessed, the Asuncion Zoo was not packed, had trees everywhere for the visitors, thus much shade, outside of the zoo you could find a couple of carts here and there with locals selling drinks and other things, the animals seemed quite happy and seemed to have ample space and habitat in which to live and a couple of them were even quite genuinely curious whenever visitors came by… most notably los monos, of course. The admission to the zoo was Gs. 7000 (7000 Guaranis) which, if you’ve looked it up yet, is not that much. The rest of the botanical gardens and the museum was gratis, incidentally.
I spent some time wandering around the rest of the botanical gardens, but hardly got anywhere because it is so big and closes at 16:00 h, but I was again impressed with how quiet and peaceful it was. There was what looked like a high school gym class going for a run, a couple hiding in the trees, obviously looking for some peace and quiet themselves, some workers improving the place and one or two cars driving through on the road access. I imagine it is busier on the weekend.
One other interesting thing that is hard to capture in a picture (so you don’t get to see one) were streams of ants carrying leaves and other detritus every once in a while and a large number of ant hills the size of a campfire pit. I pictured them all seeing my leg and climbing up my pants and taking me to their ant hills, but they seemed to leave me alone, so I tried not to step on them (which was hard because of how many there were).
On the way out of the park, there was a man carrying a large tray of donuts on his head, so I decided to buy one. For some reason he gave me two, but they didn’t cost much, so I didn’t care either way. It was an okay donut with sugar on the outside and probably sweetened condensed milk of some sort in the middle. Since I only wanted one, I left the other one in a receptacle.
Using logic, I decided that catching the bus back should be a cinch, just stand on the other side of the road and flag one down with the same bus number (I did ask Carmen at one point which bus I should take back to the city center, and I’m pretty sure it was the same one I took to the botanical gardens: 1B). I looked for a collection of people who looked like they were waiting for the bus and asked a man, in my best Spanish, if I could catch a bus to the city center. He said that I could and that the bus coming around the corner was the one to take (it was 1B), so my first South American city bus ride was a total success.
{time passes}
So, after writing the first part of this blog, I decided to visit El Museo del Barreo which includes a great collection of indiginous et. al. art and artifacts. Unfortunately, I only had an hour with which to enjoy the museum before they closed.I successfully managed to take my second round trip bus tour of the city and got off near a churrasquirea that I wanted to try.
A churrasquirea is an odd type of restaurant, apparently originating in Brazil, where there are many meats roasting on a barbecue and a wide assortment of other foods available in Sterno heated trays and ice laden salad containers. I decided that I wanted as much meat as possible, so I opted for the pay by the kilo rather than the all-you-can-eat option and proceeded directly to the meat table where the “chef” filled my plate with various cuts and types of meat. They were all well-done since they spend most of their time over the heat, but they were well seasoned and marinated and not overly tough. With a token amount of gnocchi and a couple chicken thighs, I enjoyed my meal at my first ever churrasquirea. After a typical Paraguayan dessert and some tea, I paid a whopping Gs. 85.000 for my meal and headed to the hotel.
The hotel had two employees on duty with questionable duties, lol, because after ordering a beer (Baveria, brewed in Paraguay), I spent the next hour or two teaching English and learning Spanish from Alberto who wanted to learn English to make more money. This sort of capitalism is something I completely support. After, Alberto decided that it was time to do his work, so I spent the next little while finishing up a second Baveria and watching the Futbol game between an Argentinian team and the Athletico Nacional team from Colombia.
That brings me to the present where I will soon go to sleep with a full and enjoyable day behind me. What will tomorrow bring? One day left in Paraguay…. sadly.