The Rio Paraguay Adventure

About a month ago, I was showing a new volunteer in my area around my site. I brought him to a local school where I was scheduled to give a charla to one of the classes. When we arrived, the teacher informed me that we would need to change to date. Having already grown used to the pencil-and-eraser nature of appointment making here in Paraguay, I simply smiled, and agreed to a new date the following week. As we were walking out of the school, the other volunteer looked at me and asked “Isn’t that annoying?” I replied, “No, that’s just Paraguay.” When I was new, I was as offended as this new volunteer was at the matter-of-fact way which those who cancel appointments did so, and equally bothered by how they were seemingly oblivious to the effort volunteers often put into preparations. Scheduling is completely futile here, where the laid-back lifestyle lends itself to the always popular “otro dia” (another day) mantra. It is also uncommon to ever hear “no” when offering something or inviting someone to a party or meeting, because that is considered rude (though not as rude as saying “yes” then not coming, apparently). This can be particularly frustrating for Americans who come here accustomed to feeling embarrassed about having to cancel an appointment, but here in Paraguay that’s just life.

For all these reasons, I was extremely surprised the last time I tried to take the riverboat down to Asuncion to find that it had left half an hour early – Nothing in this country leaves or starts early. On my second attempt, months later, I would be determined to get on that boat, regardless of what it took. In the end, that meant facing snakes, melting heat, running through the streets of my city in flip-flops, and really drunk deck-hands. I arrived back in site a week later with bug bites, a broken cell phone, and a vast collection of bruises (but those are from another boat story, which we’ll get to later).

It was all worth it.

Some background information is probably in order. Paraguay is split in half from north to south by Rio Paraguay (Paraguay River). The river runs conveniently past my site, as well as the capital city of Asuncion. There is not a great deal of traffic on the river from day to day, except for small canoes manned by local fishermen. Every Sunday morning, however, a large, rickety ferry runs from Brazil to Asuncion, carrying cargo and people. It comes into port at 4:30 in the morning at my site and leaves half an hour later. Well, at least it should on paper, but as you now know, that is written very lightly with a pencil and with large erasers close at hand. When three other volunteers and I arrived at the port a few months ago at 4:30 in the morning for our first boat ride attempt, we had a very hard time believing the guy standing at the edge of the water telling us that the boat had left half an hour before. We ambled back to my house dragging our cooler full of food and our broken spirits. Right before I passed out from fatigue and dejection, I promised myself that I would never miss the boat again, (at least not literally).

Fellow VAC members Danielle and Liz were also interested in heading to the capital at the same time I was last week, and were open to exploring the river route with me. The boat takes about 24 hours (on paper), and Danielle was cutting it close since she had some important appointments to get to in Guarambare the following day, but decided to roll the dice and come along. I got a call from a guy at the dock the night before letting me know that the boat would be running late the following day, and would not be taking off until noon on Sunday. That was actually good news, because it meant that we could stay up late and sleep in the following morning. If you have been paying attention to the running theme here about schedules, you shouldn’t be surprised that I was awoken by a call at 4:30 from the port telling me that the boat would be leaving earlier, and we now had about half an hour to get there before it took off. Still half-asleep, I ran into the other room to wake up my companions in an admittedly merciless manner (I flipped on the lights and told them we have to be out of the house in the next five minutes). We ran through the streets of the city leaving a roadrunner-cartoon trail of dust in our wake. Once at the dock, however, we saw no boat.

We were informed that the boat was out of contact with the office, and that it may be lost. Getting lost on a river with no run-offs seems as mysterious to me as a train getting lost, but stuff happens, and we were prepared to wait. After five hours of waiting (about 10:00 for those keeping track at home), hunger was starting to set in. We had rationed 24 hours worth of food, so breaking into that appeared to be a poor idea. Danielle and I agreed to walk to the nearest empanada stand, which was about 10 blocks away. Liz was charged with calling if the boat showed up. Shortly after buying some breakfast in another zip code, we get a call: The boat is here, and it doesn’t have any cargo. It looks like they will be leaving really soon. So Danielle and I took off running for the second time since we woke up, and we were both still wearing flip-flops, but they didn’t slow us down. The last time I ran so quickly in flip-flops, I was being chased by a mugger.

As we get back to the dock, it becomes clear that something is wrong. There were two boats, one in front of the other. The back boat, which was ours, had a rope tied to the boat in front. Ours apparently broke down and was pulled by the other. The rope attaching the two was about as thick as an electrical extension cord. It looked proportionally as big as using dental floss to tow a car. Danielle and Liz moved down to the water to ask if the boat would be fixed today or not, while I guarded the stuff. Some backpackers from Europe had just gotten off another boat and were talking to me. I had my feet hanging down off the side of the concrete dock when one of the backpackers shouted “snake!” Sure enough, a big green and white one was making its way towards me. I could either jump forward and probably get very hurt, or do a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon flying back-flip. I opted for the latter – Something which I didn’t think I was capable of (or anyone, for that matter), but when I see snakes, I guess there is a lot I can do in the name of self-preservation. He was pretty interested in our stuff, and even after I watched him slither away, I checked our bags a few times out of a fear that he would be brought on board with us. This country has yet to cure my fear of snakes, but I guess if Indiana Jones could be trapped in that pit of hell with a million snakes and it not cure his phobia, what chance do I have?

After my heart rate returned to human levels, Danielle and Liz came back with good news: The boat would be leaving soon. The problem was with the rudder, and would be fixed quickly, (quickly by Paraguayan standards). We got on board, scoped out a few empty hammocks on the main deck, and waited to hit the river. A deckhand, who readily shared with us that he was nursing a nasty hangover, also shared some Terere then got busy fixing the rudder, (Terere takes priority over everything except driving a wife in labor to the hospital and, well, that’s actually the only thing I can think of that would take priority). I looked at my cell phone to see how late we were, only to discover some bad news. Unfortunately, my snake-evasion karate move didn’t end in a gold medal-winning landing, but in an awkward roll on my side. My cell phone was crushed against my hip bone, and now had a ruined screen.

The waters are calm on the river, and the boat moves pretty slowly, so the comfort level was definitely high. The scenery is great, and you get to see parts of the country you wouldn’t otherwise. Parts of the trip made me think of Heart of Darkness, because the setting can have an ominous feel. At around 1:00 in the morning, I woke up and things felt too comfortable, almost as if we weren’t moving. Sure enough, we weren’t. The rudder problem flared back up, and we were stuck near the shore. Frankly, I was surprised – The hungover deckhand who had trouble standing really looked capable of fixing complex machinery. After sitting in the same spot until morning, the crew informed us that another boat would be along to pull us into Asuncion, but that wouldn’t be until later that afternoon. Danielle had appointments to keep, so we weren’t able to wait around until then, and we talked a passing boat into giving us a ride to the next port. I wasn’t completely disappointed to see the boat trip cut short, since being idle meant no breeze on the deck, and no breeze meant bug bites. After breaking down the night before, mosquitoes had a party on the boat, and we were the guests of honor.

The little motorboat left us on the shore of a town none of us had ever heard of. In fact, most Paraguayans have probably never heard of the town either. I’m not even sure if its on a map. It consists of a single road, with four buildings and a “bus terminal,” which was really just a little hut. We got some tickets to Asuncion on the next bus out, but had some time to kill. We walked into a local establishment which was clearly not accustomed to seeing anyone not from their own country. The only thing missing from our entrance was the sound of a vinyl record scratching as the music stopped.

When the bus arrived, I sat in a window seat and hoped to catch some shut eye. Since the main road between Concepcion and Asuncion is not really near the river, we had to take back roads the whole way there. Something like 95 percent of all roads in Paraguay are dirt, and our trip seemed to have traveled on all 95 percent of them. It was too hot to leave the window up, so I was left with no choice but to face eight hours of constant waves of dust hitting me in the face. I awoke a few hours after leaving to find that I had been sweating the whole time, which had laid a nice foundation for the red dirt to settle. On top of all that were the bug bites that covered us like chicken pox. You can only imagine what that looked like, (sadly, I have no photo of it).

There was a time when trips to Asuncion were exciting because you got to see your friends whose sites are in the far corners of the country. Now, it’s really all about air conditioning. It was about 110 while were there all week, and Asuncion is really the only place in the country where people even know what AC is. I generally head into the city once a month for a couple days, but I extended this last trip by a couple days to soak in my hotel’s cool air.

Earlier, I mentioned that some of the other party favors we walked away with from the month of October were some colorful bruises. Those too were the result of a boat, though not directly related to this story. Those, in fact, were from an unfortunate experience aboard a pirate ship.

Just a few days before leaving on my riverboat trip, a town nearby had an annual festival which resembled a county fair back home, complete with fried food and vomit-stained ride exits. One such ride was one of those giant, upside-down pirate ships. One volunteer and I agreed that while we shared a passion for thrill rides, we better not to try our luck at a ride whose safety record was undoubtedly not spotless. We had both seen a similar ship at Expo Norte, and were less than impressed with what we saw. The other volunteers we were with clearly didn’t notice the same missing screws and decades old rust patches, and bought us all tickets. I begrudgingly agreed, and got into a seat. The first warning sign of a bad experience to come came in the form of the safety harnesses’ apparent lack of padding. It dropped down over our shoulders, and all six of us searched for each other in the different rows, hoping to confirm whether our row was the only one which the ride manufacturer blatantly forgot a seemingly essential part. Our eyes all confirmed that shoddily-soldered scrap metal was actually the norm for this particular design. The boat began to sway back and forth slowly, and the prayers in Spanish from Paraguayans in front of us started to get louder. If I knew some of the prayers, I probably would have joined them. On the first vertical trip, the boat managed to stay upside-down for what felt like ten minutes. The aforementioned restraints proved to not only be lacking padding, but also any semblance of strength. Every single passenger fell forward and down, stopped only by the steel cage surrounding the seats. The shoulder restraints did manage to at least slow us down on each vertical pass so that we slammed into the cage more slowly. We did about ten passes around, which we all learned the next day as we got out of bed to be enough to make our bodies look like we were all in extremely abusive relationships.

As I rode an overnight bus back to my site last week, those bruises were just about healed and the bug bites all but gone. But, as fate would have it, I had room for one more bruise.

The road between Asuncion and Concepcion falls under that 95 percent dirt road statistic that I mentioned earlier. Dirt, though more economical, is also more prone to enormous pot holes the size of small cars. Consequently, buses and cars have to swerve to avoid them when driving quickly, and this is more difficult at night when the holes can sneak up on the drivers. It was about five in the morning and I was in a deep sleep when I was awoken by what I initially thought was a really unhappy person who I must have offended in some way. I felt a punch to my face that would have have Mike Tyson cry. I jumped and threw my fists up in a way that probably would have made it very clear to any would-be attackers that I had zero self-defense training. After the stars disappeared from my eyes and the cartoon birds flew away, I realized that a sharp crater-avoiding turn had knocked my full gallon water jug from the overhead storage right into my face. I am starting to believe that there is some sort of rule that states that you cannot live here without have at least one cut, bruise, bite or burn on your body at all times.

October was certainly full of bodily harm (bruises and stings), property damage (ruined phone) and psychological damage (that snake haunts my dreams). A common motto around Peace Corps is to “do it for the story,” and the boat ride certainly offered a fair share of them. Nevertheless, the abrupt end halfway through the trip left me wanting more, so I have penciled-in another attempt in 2010. Hopefully my next set of boat stories will not include a pirate ship, have fewer bruises, and actually make it all the way down to Asuncion. Then again, I fear for any country where Murphy’s Law flourishes more easily than here in Paraguay, so we’ll just have to see.

Tagged as: Bites, Bruises, Charlas, Heart of Darkness, Pirates, Rio Paraguay, Riverboat, Snakes, Terere