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...