Sabores Y Mas

I promised an update on my first weekend so here it is.

We left Asunción last Friday morning with Malvina Duarte who is the land owner at Laguna Blanca and was going to visit for the weekend anyway. We also took some hungover Swedes who were touring around Paraguay, adding flavour to our multicultural soup.

I don't really know how to describe Laguna Blanca as a place. You really have to see it to believe it. It is like what you imagine paradise would be like. Clear blue water, pure white sand, wooden structures to hang your hammock from, volleyball nets, fans, brick BBQs, beer and internet.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and pretty much climbed straight onto the back of a horse. According to Jeni (who knows something about horses), horse riding in South America is very different to in Europe. Here you just kind of perch on the back of the horse and hope that he understands where you want to go. The men who work at Laguna Blanca expected that we knew what we were doing and didn't seem to think it was necessary to explain to us how you drive a horse. Me and my horse weren't talking the same language at all. He just wanted to walk slowly into the shade and stay there. The main problem with that was that the shade was most likely under a tree and he didn't understand that I didn't fit under the tree as well as he did, so I came out the other end with half the skin left on my arms.

Later on, after a bit of discussion, we decided to have another go and take the Swedes with us. My horse decided to just start walking along the beach and not stop. I thought I was doing really well until I realised I was completely out of control. Jeni's horse decided it wanted to take the scenic route along the beach and zigzagged through the trees and eventually headed straight into the Laguna. Nils's (one of the Swedes) horse wanted a drink, so went to stand in the stream for a while then went back into the stable, while Viktor (the other Swede)'s horse decided to start running towards the house, completely freaking him out and ensuring he would never get on a horse for the rest of his life. After some explaining, one of the stable guys came with Jeni and Nils along the trail with Nils' horse attached to his own until they eventually overtook me and my plodding beauty. I was so slow that the guy constructed a whip for me out of wood that I only used once, then showed it to the horse every time I wanted him to go faster and he obeyed! Success at last - to an extent. I then realised that going fast wasn't as much fun as the experts were making it look. Its very bouncy which I found ridiculously funny for about ten minutes, then realised my legs might be slowly snapping. You just have to hang on and hope you don't bounce right off. After 3 hours of horse riding its difficult to walk. That's why I was so glad when the locals challenged me, Nils, Viktor and another Paraguayan guy to a game of volleyball. I think I spent more time on my ass in the sand than I did on my feet. Maybe I am getting old, but its just so hard to move as fast as a ball in the sand! Needless to say, we lost the game (but not by much) and had to buy the beer.

The next day we woke up to a TV crew filming a cooking show at breakfast. The show is called Sabores Y Mas and stars a rather large chef called Julio and his hand puppet. I couldn't believe my eyes. Let me try and explain the scene. There was a puppet operated by a man speaking in a stupid voice being filmed talking to a chef cooking fish and mandioca advertising an electric back massager, which was going to be broadcast on normal TV in Paraguay at the table next to where I was eating breakfast. I had just got over this strange sight when the chef asked if he could use our table. I offered to move, but he said he wanted us to stay where we were so that he could interview Jeni and I as part of the program. I tried to explain that my Spanish isn't good enough for national TV, but he was insistent so I stayed and ended up answering questions. Some were easy questions like "where are you from?" and "why do you like Paraguay?". Some others I don't even know the answers to in English never mind in Spanish such as "why is it important to save habitats from destruction?" and "what will be the next stage of your scientific studies here after you have have created an inventory of all the species?" Bear in mind that this is a three way conversation between me, the chef and a puppet. The worst thing is, I think the puppet was actually making fun of me!

Then we went kayaking. The Laguna is 2km long and about 1km wide and we made it round the whole thing in 2 hours. I have no idea if that is fast or not, but it was too long and Nils and I got totally burnt which took care of the remaining skin on my arms. We left Laguna Blanca destroyed. I couldn't sit down from the hours I spent on the horse and couldn't stand up from the hours I spent in the kayak. It was a really fantastic weekend.

On the way home on Sunday, as part of a test run since I will have to drive up there next week, Malvina gave me a shot of her 4x4 on the dirt road. It was amazing, like a rally. I only messed up once and banked into a big sand pile because a second 4x4 was coming towards me on a one track bit of road and he was bigger than me, so I chickened out. We only had to push a bit to get going again, in the boiling heat, with sore, burnt bodies.

I really can't wait to go back. Bring on Sunday.

Good things and the bus

After re-reading my last post, this one definitely needs to have a more positive spin. Someone said to me that it sounded like a 'boiling hot bureaucratic nightmare', which it is, but it is other things too so let me explain some of the aspects of Asunción that make me glad to be here.

The first thing has to be the view. This city is so green. Everywhere you look you can see big trees. They line every street and spill out onto the roads. They grow through the pavements and even through the buildings. You can walk through the door of a building and expect to find yourself indoors, only to walk into an open space with trees growing up from the floor, negating the need for any kind of roof. My second favourite thing is the practicality of it all. The people who live in this country seem to be much better at adapting to things and inventing ways around problems or just generally making life easier than they are in the UK because things are much less controlled here. A couple of my favourites are a shopping basket that you pull along behind you on wheels and diners where you go in and pick from a large range of food then take your plate to be weighed to determine the cost. The baskets on wheels aren't as clumsy as trolleys and don't break your arm as soon as you put a carton of milk in them. Buffet style meals where you can eat as much, or more importantly, as little as you like and only pay for what you have seems like a perfect idea. It reduces waste generated by people trying to put all they can fit on one plate to make sure they get their moneys worth.

I also feel the need to say something about buses. It's a wonderful experience taking the bus around the city. All the buses seem to be so old that its some kind of miracle that they are still even moving. Every time you step on one, (which is a feat in itself as the drivers tend to think that stopping to let people on is more of an inconvenience than a necessity) the bus driver looks at you as if to say 'what the hell are you doing on my bus?'. That always makes me smile. Knowing exactly how much it's going to cost you to get where you are going and having the exact money in your hand before you get on is recommended because there is little time for conversation. After you pull your second foot half way towards the step, the driver is likely to slam his foot on the accelerator, then perhaps on the brake shortly afterwards in an effort to throw you clean through the windscreen. If you make it past the driver in one piece, hanging onto the first thing you see is a good idea then just don't let go until you see where you have to get off and start making the equally traumatic journey to the back of the bus and jump off as fast as you can to avoid losing a leg. The Paraguayans are expert at the whole experience. Even old people and children manage to negotiate the buses, nimble as cats and standing without even holding on while they find their purses and make their way casually to their seat. I like getting the bus so much because once I am off and have reached my destination, I feel like I've really achieved something. The other thing that's great about buses is the people who jump on and off trying to sell you something in-between. They are the true masters of the bus. The range of things for sale is enormous too. You could almost do all your shopping just by taking the bus. You can buy all the common stuff like bread, juice, sweets, chocolate etc, but every so often, someone comes on the bus wearing a suit and you feel like he is a professional on-bus salesman. The other day, Jeni and I took the bus across town and one such man boarded. He began his sell by explaining that the item he was about to show us would change our lives and that it was the most important personal item we would ever own, before producing several multicoloured toothbrushes. Brilliant.

Dead slow and stop

I left the UK on the 7th of April so it's taken me a whole 12 days to get around to writing this. Part of the reason for this is that the start of the trip was so unbelievably boring that I didn't really see the point in telling anyone about it. I'll try my best to start from the beginning though and just skip the really boring bits.

So I left from Glasgow on the 7th which was every bit as horrible as I had expected it to be since I had to say bye to most of my family in one go. I also hadn't realised just how attached I had become to my new niece Ella. Anyway, the flight brought me into Heathrow terminal 5 (which is like a space station for anyone who hasn't seen it yet) where I had to wait 6 hours for my friend to arrive since I completely misjudged the flight times. When we finally got on the plane, the 7 and a half hour flight I was expecting turned out to be the most uncomfortable and boring 15 hours of my life. I am still sure the travel agent guy sold me the flight as 7 and a half hours. So we finally hit Buenos Aires the following morning and managed to talk passport control into letting us stay in their country long enough to get back out again. My passport is coated in Argentinian entry and exit stamps from the last time I was here which might look slightly suspicious to a suspicious person. I was still walking around with a European head on at that point but was quickly corrected by the taxi driver who took us to the bus stop. I had forgotten just how slow the pace of life is on this continent. Nobody is moving at any speed at all and sometimes it seems amazing that anything even gets done. This is perfect for me. This was the moment I realised that despite that fact I had just left all my family, quit my job and packed up my whole life, I had made the right choice. I have made the right choice.

The journey to from Buenos Aires to Paraguay was long and boring and after the discomfort of the plane, I slept through most of it anyway. The buses here are brilliant and perfectly designed for sleeping in. We stopped for a few days in Encarnacion, which is the southern most town in Paraguay, to see Paul Smith, the Liverpudlian, who has been working with us on the Para La Tierra project. I have just realised I should maybe explain what Para La Tierra is for anyone who doesn't know.

My friend Jeni and I met volunteering for a biological research station called Ecosara which was attached to a conservation organisation in San Rafael National Park in Paraguay. We both liked the project so much that we wanted to stay and work there, however, there were too many problems with the location and with the people who owned the land in San Rafael that we decided it would be best to move the program elsewhere. We had visited Laguna Blanca in July of 2008 and really liked it, so we talked to the land owner about setting up a research station and she was very keen to work with us. So we both returned to the UK and worked hard to set up the NGO at Laguna Blanca with a different group of people. We then decided we wanted to return to Paraguay to run the organisation ourselves and to live at Reserva Laguna Blanca. That's kind of the short version of the story anyway. So Para La Tierra is now a conservation NGO (non-governmental organisation) based at Laguna Blanca which runs a volunteer and internship program for international students, young scientists, travellers and people of all ages with a general interest in nature to come and work and live beside the naturaleza of Laguna Blanca. It has a council of 5 members, plus Jeni and I who run the project from the reserve and two professional scientists who we employ to help with the intern projects etc. And that's it. (More info here www.paralatierra.org)

After spending a couple of days with Paul in Encarnacion, last Sunday night we got on another bus to Asuncion (being on a bus all night is also good for saving money on hotels) where we stayed until Friday morning. To be honest, most of the week was hell. The city centre is hot and oppresive with hoards of traffic and people moving noisilly all the time. We stayed in a cheap crappy hotel we had never been in before for the first 2 nights before changing to a much much nicer one after negotiating the price to match the cheaper one. The main problem with being in the city though was that we had to run around collecting documents, making photocopies, getting pictures taken and partaking in general wild goose chases in order to get our residency visas. We still haven't finished getting all the things we need yet, but we have made a really good start on it. When we went to the migrations office on the first day, he gave us a list of about 20 things we needed to do to get our visas including several different types of police forms, a medical check, photographs and official translations of all of our UK documents we already had. Everything also has to be checked, rechecked, stamped, re-stamped and checked again only for them to then tell us that the thing we got in the first place was all wrong and even though 12 other people have checked it, we have to back to the beginning and start again. Bear in mind we are also paying for all these people's time and apparently their energy too although they don't really seem to be expending any. I don't understand why the people here don't complain more about how dismal the service is. If this was Britain, there would be national uproar. In the migration office itself there can be queues of tens of people, and there will be several staff just hanging out behind the desk talking to each other about the football. Unbelievable. So if you take away all of that frustration, I'm sure Asuncion would be quite good. I'm hoping to have the chance to explore it properly in a more relaxed manner at some point soon.

On Friday morning we left for Laguna Blanca. We just went for the weekend though unfortunately, now I am back in Asuncion and the heat is incredible in the city today. We haven't left the hotel room much because I we need to stay very close to the air conditioner, and because we have a lot of computer work to do. Tomorrow and Wednesday we are giving a talk to the English Conversation Club in Asuncion about Para La Tierra and what we are doing here in Paraguay. I'm not sure I really know the answer to that.

I think that's all the boring news out of the way. The weekend we spent in Laguna Blanca was far more interesting and strange and fantastic but I am suffering quite a lot today so I am going to leave writing about it until next time...