Direct quote from Marco, the tour guide I hired for the day: “It’s not so hot today; it’s only around 38.” For those of you who don’t like the heat, you might not want to read the rest of the horrible details, but for those of you who like the heat, well today was fantastic! And if you’re still reading despite hating the heat, the humidex was well into the 40’s.
Using my broken Spanish and the Latin American Spanish Phrasebook & Dictionary I purchased for this trip, I managed to communicate with the hotel staff this morning that I wanted to hire an English guide for the day. After a few phone calls and texts, I was told that the guide would show up at “las once” (11:00 a.m.), so I slathered on the sun screen, zipped off my pant legs and got myself ready for a small adventure. Well, seven and  a half hours later, I was much better informed about Paraguayan history, landmarks and had a wonderful trip to Chaco’i (Cha-co-ee) all on foot or by boat. In addition, I gained a completely new perspective on Paraguay and its people.
For the first few hours of the tour, Marco (the guide) took me to various locations in the city center and told me so much about Paraguay using displays at the downtown museums as props, not to mention that going inside was a good way of getting out of the sun a little bit (and sometimes the heat if there was air conditioning (there wasn’t much)). At one point I asked him if he was a professor at a university because of his vast knowledge, and he replied that he wasn’t; that he was just interested in history. He is a freelance tour guide, so he might end up working for many different companies in the span of a week or have private tours like mine.
When we arrived to the dock area, he was telling me about the boats then suggested that we should take a ride on one of the boats to another town. As it turns out, I must have been really special because when I asked him if he takes all his tours on the boat, he said that he hasn’t even been there himself in many years (15, I think he said). The return trip cost $7000 (that is Guaranies, btw, look up the exchange rate). It was some of the best 7000 Guaranies I’ve ever spent. If it weren’t for the motorcycles (that have replaced horses in the last 10 to 20 years), you might think you had gone back to colonial times.  The town of Chaco’i includes about 5000 residents scattered over a wide area and is across and up the river slightly from Asuncion. From Chaco’i, you get an excellent view of the city which can be seen in this picture along with the collectivo boats that shuttle people across. Our boat for both directions was the Escorpion which is the coolest boat name I’ve ever been on and can be seen in this picture (the blue one).
I guess the part I liked most about Chaco’i was that it was a true image of life in Paraguay. There were no people asking if you want to change your U.S. Dollars, there was no one else speaking English, plenty of people were having picnics or swimming in the river, people were sitting on chairs in the shade in their yards doing what anyone who sits in a chair in the shade does, a friendly dog with muddy paws came for a visit then left again, then came back again, the young teenager who was helping with the collectivo sat in a shade with an interesting box that I thought at first was a bird trap, but our best guess was that it was just an elaborate container for a clock that showed through a plexi glass front and surrounded by Styrofoam (maybe so it would float if it fell overboard) and shaped like a birdhouse, there was a woman in the small shop that seemed to have everything within 200 sq. ft. and sold us some much needed liquid–Paso de Los Toros made by the Pepsico Inc. and with the slogan, “Arrolla La Sed” (which I apparently interpreted correctly to mean “Satisfies your thirst”)–and a cupcake and spent upwards of 20 minutes telling us about the occasional floods in the area and the last one that reached the roof of her shop and the bird watching tours that her husband runs for mostly tourists in the winter months (which are Canadian summer months), and most of all that everyone was friendly and seemed to enjoy what they were doing despite the heat. And that my friends, is why you should always hire a guide or take a tour on the first day in any city.
{time passes, but not much}
As I was heading down the beautiful marble staircases in the hotel to find supper, I met a hotel employee and another guest talking. The guest was obviously stumbling through Spanish, so I said something in English and lo and behold, he was German and spoke enough English to get by. He was, coincidentally:
- also heading out for supper
- also traveling alone
- also in South America for 7 weeks
- also starting the third week of his South American travels
- also in his 40’s
So, to make a long story short, we headed out in search of a restaurant that was recommended by the guide. Now, after 7.5 hours of mostly listening, the details were not as fresh as they could be, but after exploring the neighbourhood a little, we came upon the exact restaurant which was suggested by both the guide and the hotel where one can order (and eat) authentic Paraguayan haute cuisine; in the case of this restaurante, the surubà fish from the Paraguay River, the actual river that I took a boat across earlier in the day. I ordered the Guaranà Surubà which was very well prepared and came with a side of rice. The fish itself was perfectly prepared and tasted like a good trout (most trout I don’t like so much) and had a sort of green sauce on it. Before and during the meal, I enjoyed some local Paraguayan beer and rounded off the meal with a postre (dessert) recommended by the waiter, Crema de Papaya, which when delivered gets topped off with a red liqueur of unknown flavour.
All in all, a great day in Asuncion, one which I’m afraid may not be topped for the rest of my time in Paraguay.