Paraguay, parte cuatro

On to the main event, the reason I ended up in Paraguay to begin with: Iguazu falls. The largest system of waterfalls in the world, it is rivaled only by Victoria Falls in South Africa, which, while smaller in all around area, still has the largest single curtain of water in the world. Niagara, by comparison to either, is just a trickle. Much thanks to Wikipedia for today's trivia!

Anyway, the Falls are actually on the border of Brazil and Argentina, and can be viewed from either country. There's some debate as to which country has the best view, but from what I'd heard, Brazil had the best. So that was where I would go. There was, however, the pesky little problem of the Brazilian visa, which costs $150 and takes a week or so to obtain. But I was informed by those in the know (er, Kati) that from Ciudad del Este in Paraguay you can enter into Brazil freely and not a soul will bother to stop you at the border. Frightening as that sounded to me, I was prepared to take the risk.

And it was fine. We hopped a bus, drove over the bridge, and suddenly everything was Portuguese and samba. So I was in Brazil, though (shhhhh!) not officially. This lax security would come up later to bite me in the ass (foreshadowing again!), but for the moment I was much relieved at not having to pay $150 for a couple hours at a big waterfall.

But honestly, it might have been worth it. The Falls were absolutely amazing, something no digital camera could actually capture. Not that we didn't try.





I could sit here and try and explain what it was like, but that would be pointless. Looks like you'll just have to go there and see for yourself.

And while you're there, don't forget to see the Itaipu dam, our next stop on the Ciudad del Este tourist train. Again, Wikipedia is there for all our quick-but-not-necessarily-accurate information needs: Itaipu, one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World (who knew?), is the largest dam in the world, and every day gives off the hydroelectric energy of 434,000 barrels of petroleum, providing 93% of Paraguay's energy and 20% of Brazil's. That's pretty cool. Also cool: watching them as they illuminate it at night to very loud, very dramatic music. Let me just say that it is way, way bigger than I imagined. Unfortunately you can't tell from the pictures, so you'll just have to take my word for it.
Finally, after an evening of ka'u rapo and karaoke (pictures available upon request), I was ready to head back to Argentina. This, much to my dismay, was easier said than done.

The trip, a nice little 18-hour bus trip, started off well. My big mistake was to take the bus through Paraguay (my nemesis!) and exit from Encarnacion instead of through Ciudad el Este. Thus we arrived at the border in the middle of the night, and I was awoken from a rather pleasant and well-earned sleep to hand my passport to the official who had boarded the bus, who informed me that I did not possess an entry stamp into Paraguay. Um, oops. Surely they had stamped it? I had stopped through customs on the way out of Argentina; isn't it...um, customary...to receive an exit and an entrance stamp at the same time? Apparently not. I bid you return to my little Brazil adventure. So he was right. I didn't have it. I made a "silly me" gesture and smiled, and was told I'd have to get off the bus and yes, "come into the office." Mild jangling of the nerves. Okay then.

I was desperately trying to wake up and remember my Spanish, and he brought me into this little room, where I was interrogated by a very formidable woman in a ponytail that somehow, inexplicably, added to my fear. She informed me that I was in (indecipherable Spanish), and that there was a fine of 300,000-odd Gaurani (that's Paraguayan money), about $100, which I did not have. I explained this to her, very calmly, adding that I never actually saw any customs officials when I entered Paraguay and was thus prevented from obtaining the necessary stamp. So it wasn't my fault, obviously. She seemed much affronted by this and proceeded to give me a brief history of Paraguayan international border control, and reminded me coldly that there were many customs officials at the border (thousands! she said) and it was my responsibility to find them. I then informed her that the bus I was on didn't stop, and she rolled her eyes up into her brain and said that I had to ASK the driver to stop. Obviously!

Finally I asked her what was to be done. It was the middle of the night and I had no money anyway, couldn't she just let me pass? Because honestly, I was trying to LEAVE the godforsaken place, what difference could it possibly make? At this she hardened--if further hardening on her part was even possible--and said that I'd have to get off the bus, turn around, and go back to Ciudad del Este. Now I was getting panicked. I would not--could not!--go back. I asked for an ATM. She said there was one in the city center, but the bus driver wouldn't wait for me. Essentially, she said every possible thing she could say to make me feel helpless, hopeless, and alone. And it worked marvelously. I started crying like a little girl, my Spanish reduced to incoherent pleas. How on earth was I in a room with the only two people in Paraguay who didn't know who I was?

She sent me out of the room with a look that said "Don't worry, something can be arranged," seamlessly transitioning from bad cop to good cop in an instant. I stood outside, shaking and exhausted and feeling like the poorest, saddest person in the whole world, when the original official--the man, who by the way also had extremely bad hair, it must be an intimidation tactic--came up to me. "Crying isn't going to help you," he said. "You'll get no sympathy from us." Of course I started to howl at that, but desperately tried to stop. It wasn't going to happen.

He cocked his head. "How much can you afford to pay?" I stopped crying immediately. Hope! Yes, this was South America! I'd forgotten! I told him that I had only 120 Argentine pesos, the truth (dammit, should have said less), and he said he'd talk to his partner, scary ponytail lady. Next she came out, and very kindly asked me to come into the office. "We wouldn't want you to have to go back," she said. "Let me talk to my partner, see if we can work something out." They disappeared, came back a few minutes later and said if I gave them what I had, they'd let me go. I nearly fell to the ground to kiss their feet, so relieved was I to be leaving Paraguay. "But remember, we're doing you a favor, so not a word!" They admonished. Of course not! I would say nothing and be grateful to the end of my days!

I rushed back to the bus to get my money, and the other passengers, who had been waiting for me, were all concern and pity (these ones knew me, of course). "Why are you crying? What did they do to you?" I grabbed the money, muttered "I'm fine," and ran like the wind back to the office, where I paid them, got back my passport, and fled at long last from the Country of Multiple Miseries, mouth firmly shut.

That lasted until we crossed the border, when the Argentine official, a very pretty (and I'm not even making that up) girl with NO PONYTAIL, commented that I didn't have a stamp from Paraguay, at which point I lost it again. I think I whined something like "They wouldn't give me one!", and she shook her head. "How much did they make you pay?" I told her, and she smiled sweetly and actually said "Well it's over now. You're in Argentina, and you won't have any problems here." I could have kissed her.

We got off the bus to go through customs, and word of my shakedown had spread to everyone else. People squeezed my hand and apologized, a grandmotherly type tsk-tsked and said "And after what happened to you in Asuncion!", and my general bad luck was discussed freely among the crowd. Some of the Argentine officials asked me how much I had to pay, and when I told them, they nodded. "Barrato," they said. Cheap. Well that's one good thing anyway. Could have been worse.

Then we got back on the bus, and I breathed in the air of Argentina, a country that in that moment was as dear to my heart as my own, and settled in for a nice long bout of self pity. I was crying, and it was one of those indulgent, wonderful cries. Poor, poor me! Attacked! Robbed! Alone! Tired! Forced to speak nothing but Spanish for an endless week! Forced to bribe mean, ugly people with bad hair! Woe is me, sufferer of great misfortune!

And then, somewhere in the middle of all that wallowing, something began to needle me. Never one to overlook an emotion, however faint, I decided to investigate. And to my surprise I found that what I felt, underneath all of my whining, was shame. I was back in Argentina, yes, and on vacation. In a few short weeks I would be heading back to the states, back to a family so happy they would make Norman Rockwell blush, to celebrate a holiday that would no doubt involve lots of food and embarrassing quantities of presents, in a big, lovely house in a big, lovely suburb. And after that I'm off to Scotland, where (I hope) I'm awaited with tenderness, and after that...whatever I want, really.

I forget, sometimes, that I used to be a missionary. That I used to live my life for something other than myself. And unless I remind myself, I forget that those kids, who I have been so busy hating, will probably never go anywhere. For them there will never be Christmas, or feasting, or travel or college or education or even parents. Nothing excuses what they did to me of course, but then, what excuse do I have for all this whining? What on earth do I have, really, to be so sad about?

Do I sound preachy? You can take the girl out of the mission field, as they say... But honestly, I am ashamed of myself sometimes. I am singularly blessed. I know this. I would go on and wax poetic on the realizations that overtook me on the long trip back to Buenos Aires, but some things are just better left off the Internet.

So that's my Paraguay adventure. Hope it wasn't too long-winded. Sometimes I just can't help myself!

Paraguay, parte tres

And so our saga continues. I slept uneasily that night, wary of feeling any of the warning signs my doctor had mentioned. When I woke, the pain had left my head, but instead chose to take up residence in every other conceivable part of my body. Honestly, muscles were throbbing in places I never suspected contained nerve cells.

But my dear and faithful new friend, appeared in the morning after spending eight hours freezing on a bus that took much longer than usual, and I was so happy to see her I forgot to ache for a few seconds. She had bought all the newspapers, and produced from her backpack the Asuncion equivalent of the New York Star, in which I appeared, vomiting in the Emergency Room (where did they get that picture??) under the headline "Fifteen Parañitas Attack and Almost Kill a Tourist!" It was written in a mixture of Spanish and Guarani, the local language, and so I had to have Esther translate the choicest sentences, including the one that says the "little pirahnas peeled her like an egg." Nice.

Next, we went to the police station, where they had recuperated Vivian's cell phone and, thankfully, my debit card. Sadly, the camera that Kati and Esther had owned for all of 24 hours was never to be seen again. Esther assures me it is now in the possession of one of the more unscrupulous of Asuncion's finest. Ah well.

Finally, having said goodbye to Vivian, we were on a bus headed back to Ciudad del Este. And there I stayed for four days, in the capable hands of Esther's friends, who managed to show me a very good time in spite of the scrapes all over my body and the tennis-ball shaped goose egg on my jaw.

They were gentle with me the first night I was there, but after that were determined, at my behest, to get me as ka'u rapo as possible on the subsequent nights, ka'u rapo being Guarani for so drunk I would no longer cower in fear when we passed an elementary school. The word was introduced to me on my first night there, before I even went to Asuncion, when we had bonded over red wine and my inability to dance salsa to their exceptionally high standard. A few shots of the night in question:

After a day of rest, they endeavored to send me home with at least a few good memories of their homeland. First they took me to a big national park, where acres of forest had been covered in water following the creation of the Itaipu dam (more on that later). One incredible thing about Paraguay: Everything is free. Even the horse and buggy ride we took through the park.

The park was full of these anthills, which fascinated me, as anyone who has ever seen me spend an hour watching an ant carry a leaf twice its size across the sidewalk can attest to.


Next on the agenda was the zoo. This was, without a doubt, the greatest zoo I have ever been to. Because, mystifyingly, the proprietors never saw fit to actually separate the people from the animals with anything more than a little wire cage. Meaning I could reach my little finger in and have it torn off by a jaguar, if I were so inclined. I contemplated it in fact, when a leopard was rubbing its shanks on the cage not two inches from my eager little hands, but as I do with most of my idiot urges, I managed to restrain myself. I did, however, snap a picture of the leopard when it had gone a safe distance away by sticking my entire camera inside of its habitat:


I did the same thing with a toucan, who, friendly little fellow that he was, caught me taking his picture and came up to investigate, trying ridiculously to stick his enormous beak outside, no doubt because he wanted me to pet him, not because he wanted to bite me:



But it got even better than that. And no one can fault me for this: I did reach my hands in to touch the monkeys. They WANTED me to. I KNEW it. And they wrapped their tiny little monkey hands around my finger and it was so adorable I almost fainted with pleasure. I love, I mean I REALLY love monkeys. Not as much as the little boy monkey loved me, mind, but I love them!



So that was that day. Most interesting of all, besides the monkeys, was the fact that everywhere I went people knew me. When I limped into the zoo, the security guards said they saw me on the television, and told me to let them know if I needed anything at all. In the park, a boy scout leader apologized on behalf of his entire country. On the bus, the driver said he was ashamed and sorry. So now I'm famous, or at least I was for a few days.

There is more, there is still more, but for now I have to eat pizza.

Paraguay, parte dos

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! The turkey's roasting in the oven, the guests have been invited, and Kati and I are getting ready to make sweet potatoes and green bean casserole. But for now, I have a few moments to continue my saga.

Okay. Deep breath.

In the city center, we went to various touristy places: a memorial to Paraguay's presidents, a museum of National History, a few parks, and finally we were to head to the Palacio, the government building and supposedly very beautiful. Unfortunately I wouldn't know, as I never made it. (Achem: there's that foreshadowing again! A bit heavy-handed, I know...but I'm stalling)

One of the things Esther had told me to see was the Bahia, the view of the Rio Paraguay in front of the Palacio. We were nearly at the Palacio, when Vivian suggested we head down to the riverfront. To our left was the building, to our right, rows and rows of slum housing. What I've heard of the Favelas in Brazil aside, shanty towns don't make me nervous. I have worked, and lived, in the slums of several countries, and never had a problem. Nevertheless, I held my bag a little closer to my side.

As we walked, we passed a group of kids playing futbol in the dirt fields in front of the river. I looked around to see who was there, and finding no adults around, I surreptitiously took out my camera and took a picture, then put it back in my bag. By this time, though, we had been noticed, and were suddenly swarmed with kids. This wasn't really alarming, as I've had that happen to me a lot, except that they were trying to reach their hands into my bag. Still, for the most part they were smiling, and I was smiling back, and didn't feel frightened.

Then, all of a sudden, one of them grabbed the Star of David from around my neck and yanked it off. Any other necklace and I wouldn't have cared, but that was a gift from a dear friend after my conversion, and has a lot of value to me--and none to them. The strangest thing was, the kid that took it just stood there, holding it and staring at me. So I asked for it back, following him a bit as he backed up.

I wasn't afraid, I was furious. And I still think if we had just left, we would have been fine. But Vivian made a pretty dire mistake: She took out her cell phone to call the police. Kati had warned me before that in Paraguay, they'll kill you for your cell phone, though I still had trouble believing it. But as soon as that phone came out, all hell broke loose.

Suddenly I was surrounded by kids, screaming and trying to wrench the bag from my hands, pulling my hair and hitting me. At first I was so shocked I clung to my bag, but it got progressively more violent, and some of the kids were older, teenagers with menacing faces mingled in with the oddly still smiling faces of the younger ones. Somehow I ended up on the ground, and I don't remember much. The last thing I remember through the haze was looking up and seeing one of them leap into the air, and come down on my face.

I suppose I lost consciousness, though I didn't realize it. Vivian told me later she found me blacked out and bleeding. She was bruised and scratched up, but somehow most of the venom was aimed at me. Because I struggled, maybe? I don't know. I remember being picked up by some women who had come out of the shanty town, and led into their homes. I was hysterical, but I couldn't feel any pain. I was really confused. I was seeing things in tunnel vision: my bare feet sloshing through the mud, my legs covered in blood, the brown arms of the women helping me. I couldn't remember where I was, or what happened.

They sat me and Vivian down inside, and wiped my face with dirty rags. Vivian was crying, and kept saying to me how sorry she was. I looked at her, and I remembered who she was, and that I was in Asuncion, but I couldn't remember when I got there, how I got there. I kept asking her, and she kept saying, "You don't remember? You don't remember?"

An odd thing: We were speaking Spanish, and I could understand everything perfectly. The ladies came back in, carrying our empty bags, and said something to Vivian. We wouldn't get my camera back or her cell phone, but we could maybe get the memory chips from inside. She was pleading with them to help, and asking for the police. They took us into the bathroom to wash our legs, and I stood their shaking and crying while they washed the blood and dirt off of me, still trying to think clearly, to calm down, to remember what happened.

Finally we were being led outside, and there were three policeman waiting for us. They kept saying "Tranquila, tranquila," and led us to the police car. We waited for a few minutes while they took down what we had lost, our account of the story, and interviewed some of the people there. Vivian needed to pick up her son, so as they drove me to the hospital, she asked to be dropped off at her car and promised to meet me at the hospital.

I had no papers, and no money, so they took me to the public emergency room. This consisted of a long room crammed full of beds, in which lay people in various stages of distress and pain. There were cockroaches scurrying on the floor. The bed they took me to had bloodstains on it.

Still, the doctors were excellent. They were med students, who were required to do a rotation in public health. They were young, and treated me with such gentleness and kindness that I started crying again. At this point my Spanish, which had somehow moved into fluency in the moments after the assault, completely disappeared, and I was left explaining what happened to me as best as I could. By now I remembered more, could give them my name and birthday and tell them what happened, but I was also starting to feel pain. My head felt like someone inside of it was suffocating, and desperately trying to get out.

They took me for x-rays in ancient machines in dirty rooms, after which I sat waiting in the hall for the results. Suddenly I was nauseous, and asked for a trashcan, into which I promptly started vomiting. There was a woman sitting next to me, and she held my forehead and cooed to me, mostly because my head hurt so badly that I was screaming and didn't realize it. The people around me were talking about what happened to me in hushed tones and shaking their heads, stroking me and saying how sorry they were. My, but it hurt so badly.

Because I threw up, they needed to get an MRI. I lay inside, trying not to throw up, and crying. So much of this crying! I was alone, in a dirty foreign hospital, bruised, bleeding, with no money and no papers, and the self pity I felt in that moment, magnified by the mental haze, was shocking in its strength. I swear, the thing had arms and legs.

When they wheeled me out of the MRI room, Vivian was there, with her son and Dan, the Slovenian. I'm afraid I scared little Rauli a bit, vomiting as I was into a trashcan on my lap, but I tried to smile and reassure him that I was okay. I was massively relieved that they were there. By now, the doctors had called one of Esther's friends back in Ciudad del Este, whose number was the only remaining thing in my bag. They put me in bed and gave me an IV, and one of the nurses came up to me with a cell phone. She had given Silvi her cell phone number, and the onslaught of calls had begun.

Esther's friend wanted to come and get me. She said she could get on a bus and be there by four in the morning. But I told her no; I didn't want her to sit on a bus for five hours two days in a row. But I must have sounded terrible, because she called back a half hour later and said she was coming. Later she told me that I had thanked her profusely, and said how much I wanted her to come, though I don't remember that.

They wanted me to stay overnight in the hospital. I couldn't bear the thought. There was a child screaming in the bed next to me, the place smelled of blood and urine. Vivian convinced them to let me go, but I had to sign something saying that if I threw up again, or had head pain or nausea, I would come back. They presented me with a bill, that amounted to about $40 (for x-rays and an MRI! unbelievable!), and that I wasn't even required to pay.

When I left the hospital, held up by Vivian on one side and Dan on the other, there was a swarm of reporters and television cameras waiting for me outside. Vivian explained what happened, and I answered as many questions as my Spanish would allow, and we went home, where I showered, cried some more, and called my parents to make sure I wasn't going to die, something I do at least once in every country I go to. They were, understandably, beside themselves with worry. I did the best I could to reassure them, and went to bed.

That's enough for now, Thanksgiving preparations are calling.

Paraguay, parte uno

I am back in Buenos Aires, here to remain for a few days before heading South, and thus finally have access to Internet, which I lacked most of the time in Paraguay. Rumors as to what exactly befell me in that particular country have been running a bit wild, and I'm here to set things straight. I thought about dividing my Paraguay adventure into three parts--the good, the bad, and the ugly, if you please--but have decided that since the good would take up a mere three paragraphs (not because there was necessarily less of it, but because good stories are always short), and since the bad was all so bad so as to be ugly anyway, I would stick to a chronological (more or less) account, divided neatly into as many parts as it takes for me to get the story out.

Esther--Kati's spouse, you'll remember--is from Paraguay, and thus has several friends there. The plan was to fly to Puerto Iguazu, in the Northeast corner of Argentina, on Monday, and cross the border there into Ciudad del Este to stay with some of her friends. From there I would see the incredible Iguazu falls, the largest in the world, and then head to Asuncion for a few days before heading back on Friday. That was the plan.

I arrived in Ciudad del Este, and spent a wonderful night with Esther's friends, who convinced me to go to Asuncion the following day, and return to Ciudad del Este to spend a few days with them when they didn't have to work. Simple decision. The next day, we headed into the city to buy a camera for Kati and Esther before I left for Asuncion. Ciudad del Este, of Miami Vice: The Terrible Movie fame, is THE place to buy electronics. A city full of drugs, smuggling, terrorist cells, and blood-thirsty capitalism, it was certainly one of the most interesting places I've ever seen. Found a camera, a Nikon digital for $160, bought it, and headed to Asuncion.

I was staying with a girl named Vivian, from the Hospitality Club, a single mother with a five-year-old son. She picked me up from the bus station with Dan, a Slovenian and another HC guest, and that night we went to an opening party at the National Theater, to mingle with Asuncion's elite, drinking wine and hoarding appetizers. Afterwards, we drove out somewhere in the country to a friend's house to sit on their porch and drink beer, though at this point, like her little boy (who came with us), I was fairly exhausted and ready to go to bed.

The next day, we went to Luque, a nearby city, to look for jewelry. Luque is home to the headquarters of South American futbol, a huge, imposing building surrounded by the flags of various South American countries, a few soccer fields (are they called fields?) and a fountain in which water spouts from an enormous soccer ball.

Luque itself is a bizarre little town. Their team colors are blue and yellow, and everything in the town--and I mean everything--is painted blue and yellow. The supermarket is blue and yellow. The public trashcans are blue and yellow. The buses are blue and yellow. Even, yes, the houses are painted--you guessed it--blue and yellow. This, to me, is a fanaticism that borders on insanity. I took some pictures, which I would post here if I had them. (Attention: that is called "foreshadowing")

Next we headed into the centerof Asuncion to see the sights, and here's where the fun really begins. Unfortunately I've run out of time, so you'll have to pick it up tomorrow. Oh yes! To be continued!