Encarnation - February 19th

The good news was that our 18 hour journey turned out to only be 15½ hours long.  The bas news is that this meant we ended up at the bus station in Encarnation at 04:30 in the morning, not 07:00. Being in a bus station at that hour is bad anywhere, but here we see people sleeping in the bus station, something we haven’t seen since India, and which would not have been tolerated in any other place we have been in South America.  But now we are in Paraguay, one of South America’s two landlocked counties, and one of its two poorest (coincidentally the other is Bolivia, the other landlocked country).  The other reason why it doesn’t feel safe here is that the Carnival parade has just ended and there are a lot of drunk people walking the streets.

After a taxi to our hotel (at a rip off price) we then sit in the lobby for 3 hours until they have a room for us.  The funny thing is that we see all the other guests coming in from their carnival exertions, and can watch highlights of it all on TV, so we even feel part of it.  It’s a lot like the Rio carnival here, and we can even compare because that one is still going on live on TV as well.  I think we made a good choice with doing carnival in Montevideo, as that one finished earlier, and we just aren’t adjusting to the late nights like the locals.  It is a nice lobby to sit in, actually we are in the nicest hotel in town, with views out to a now deserted riverfront where the carnival was earlier.  Due to the prices here we can stay in the nicest place in town for the same price as decent hostels cost in Argentina (or average ones cost in the more expensive Uruguay).

We have adjusted to siestas though.  A combination of the lack of sleep from the bus journey, and the heat (it is 38, or 100 if you are old fashioned, degrees), and a good aircon unit in the room, means we take a long one today.  When we wake up there is a change in the town.  While before when we went looking for breakfast we found a very sleepy town with nobody around, now we find a very sleepy town with everyone down on the beach.  The presence of a beach in landlocked Paraguay needs some explaining.  A recently built dam on the river Parana meant that a large part of Encarnation got submerged.  The local government has taken this opportunity to build a whole man-made beach along the river, complete with views across to Posadas in Argentina.  It only opened 3 weeks ago, and now it is packed with people, stands selling soft drinks, beer, and various other crap.  It looks like it will be a great boost to the local economy.  So amazingly after a week on the beaches of Uruguay we have ended up in Paraguay’s premier beach destination, although this beach was so packed it was standing room only so we didn’t actually go onto it.

In the evening we go out for a walk and to look for somewhere for dinner.  This isn’t as easy as it sounds, it seems like a lot of places are closed, whether this is a regular Sunday thing or it is a post-carnival thing, we can’t be sure, but we end up having to eat in the same place in which we bought breakfast.  The food is surprisingly good and cheap, especially the beer which costs £1 a litre.