Across the Paraguayan Chaco: Asunción del Paraguay

At the central plaza, a big digital clock showed also the temperature: forty-four Celsius. It was enough to explain the obvious evaporation of the nearby Paraguay River; the town was literally steaming. It was my first visit to Asuncion and after dropping my luggage in the hotel, I was ready for lunch.

Fearing my blood would boil out if I began wandering around and being too picky, I entered the Lido Bar, a restaurant at one of the central plaza corners. Inside it wasn’t much cooler, but the place looked attractive. It had a square bar at its centre – where most customers sat – and a few seats squeezed along the walls. It was an active place, and that is always a good testimony for such a place.

I sat by the bar and a waitress promptly gave me a menu. The first meal in a new country is always a special occasion and I wanted to make the best out of it. The first item that caught my attention was the "Sopa Paraguaya," – Paraguayan soup. Good, it was ethnic enough for a first meal. But I had another reason for choosing it; drinking a hot soup when the temperature outside threatened to spoil the thermometers had an intrinsic humorous value. It was the ultimate confrontation between Human Will and Nature. Earlier, in Xian, I had seen Chinese people enjoying ice-cream at temperatures of minus nine Celsius. Would the opposite situation be enjoyable? Without stopping to ask what did the name mean, I ordered my soup.

"Excuse me, you gave me a fork," I said to the waitress.
"What did you order?" she asked with a frown.
"Sopa Paraguaya."
"It’s OK," she said and disappeared with a curious smile on her lips.

Being open to foreign customs has been a major lesson of my trips; but what was I supposed to do with a fork and a soup? Chopsticks would be more useful, but mine were within my luggage. Instead of merely fighting Nature, I would now need to confront some very weird local customs. It was time to be brave.

While trying to summon out my courage, the waitress approached me with what seemed to be a piece of over-dense sponge cake and put it in front of me.
"Excuse me, I asked for a Paraguayan Soup."
"That’s it," she said smiling that smile again.

In Paraguay and Bolivia, the word soup is sometimes used to design dishes prepared by boiling out the water used in its preparation. Sopa Paraguaya is a cake prepared with corn flour; it costs less than one dollar.

In a continent full of strange landscapes, the Chaco is one of the most bizarre. If it was a complete desert it would be easier to describe. Suffering of unreliable rains, the yellowish sand fits only for wild shrubs to grow; reaching up to three meters, they obstruct any other sights.

Even knowing that - and maybe due to that knowledge - my crossing it was inevitable.

In the early afternoon I arrived at Asuncion’s bus terminal – quite far away from downtown – and bought a forty dollars ticket to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in Bolivia. The bay number and departure hour were clearly stated on the ticket; I happily left my luggage at the terminal and returned to downtown. Roughly an hour before the departure time the terminal welcomed me back and I relaxed on a bench with a generous portion of terere, a kind of iced tea which fitted the forty-five degrees Celsius weather outside.

A cool ten minutes before the departure time, I approached the relevant bay and found neither people nor a bus. I opened the glass door, walked into the burning air and asked a guard what happened. "Salen de la oficina," "they leave from the office," he told me with a cruel smile while pointing at a bus that was leaving the terminal.

Without thinking twice, I re-entered the terminal building, crossed it running, and left through the main entrance, just in time to see my bus appearing on the main road. With no other options – I did not know where the office was – I run after the bus for two blocks. That was not what I had paid for. The bus stopped next to a house packed with people and eventually left some thirty minutes after its schedule – in a more South American fashion. My protests were answered with a deep silence.

The bus was modern and comfortable; it seemed to have a strong air-conditioner and a television that didn’t stop working. Most passengers brought into the bus enough food for a month and many of them were Mennonites. Soon after leaving we got a big dinner and my mood began to improve: soon I was to see the Paraguayan Chaco!

Travelling at night did not make things easier. Despite the air-conditioner, the bus heated up quickly and became as steamy as the surroundings. Sleeping was not an option and most passengers were swinging between various states of stupor. Three and half hours after midnight the bus stopped at an immigration booth, just after a town called Filadelfia. Despite being roughly at the country’s centre, our passports were stamped out. To my questions, the other passengers smiled vaguely pointed westwards and said: "Nada," (nothing). Seldom have I heard a more accurate statement.

Soon after the asphalt disappeared and there were no signs of civilization. With the first lights, I could see we were travelling on a narrow sand path surrounded by shrubs and nothing more. Only a customs check broke the boredom; a colony of butterflies was flying around their well watered garden.

Nothing.

A vast emptiness.

An hour after noon, we arrived at the Bolivian Ibibobo border cross. Shortly after, the landscape changed into a hilly one – the trademark of Tarija and a few hours later we entered the Santa Cruz plains. At 10pm, after twenty-five hours of almost uninterrupted travel – shaped as our seats - we entered the city of Santa Cruz.

At first sight South America is a linguistically simple continent for the visitor: Spanish and Portuguese complete the list of main official languages in the vast majority of the continent and both are related. However, South America suffers of a great variety of extreme landscapes that have isolated big areas. Moreover, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani and other native languages have influenced the local versions of Spanish and sometimes even created confusing dialects.

If compared to the Spaniard Spanish, the main characteristics of the South American dialects is the collapse of the "c," "s," and "z" into a single sound comparable to the English "s"; nonetheless it is not rare to hear it pronounced as a "sh."

Until now it was simple. Two sounds have striking differences from one country to another: the "ll" and the "y." at the end of a word, "y" is always pronounced as "ee," but at the beginning or the end – Spanish is not exactly a phonetic language – it sounds as a "sh" in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay but as an "ee" or a "j" in Bolivia and the other Andean counties. The lateral consonant "ll" is the most complicated sound. Spaniard pronunciation is almost impossible for most humans. Argentineans and the other southern countries settled down – again – for a "sh," while Bolivia and the Andean countries prefer an "ee" or a "lee." The surname "Aslla" is pronounced "As-sha" in Argentina and "As-ee-a" or "As-lee-a" in Bolivia. Bolivians have added a "jh" to denote the English "j," nonexistent in Spanish.

This is not all. Speech speed and the underlying tone upon with the words are placed change from place to place. Chileans speak very fast and skip the ending "s," while Bolivians enlarge certain vowels, "la-aar-go" they said (long) instead of "lar-go." The last is an influence of the Aymara way of emphasizing words.

The vocabulary suffers as well of significant variants which can cause significant embarrassment. In Argentina, "tirar" means "to pull," as in Spain. But in Paraguay, "estirar" (to stretch) is used. In Bolivia, "tirar" is the parallel of the English word that originally meant "From Unknown Common Knowledge," that infamous "f" word. "Jalar" is used there to pull something.

These dialects can create "serious" difficulties for the unaware traveller. "Serio" would Argentineans say, while Bolivians would prefer "grave." Mon Dieau!

Moving through South America can play confusing games with the Spanish language; the same noun can refer to different objects. Usually, that is of no concern to the casual traveller, unless it is related to food or other basic needs.

Despite the fabulous coffees of Brazil and Colombia, the main drinks at the southern outskirts of the continent are infusions of various herbs. These are generally known as "mate" (maa-tae), but the noun can refer to different drinks.

Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay call "mate" to a drink prepared out of "yerba-mate" (shaer-baa maa-tae). In Argentina and Uruguay, the ground shrub is used to fill up an empty kind of pumpkin which has the general shape and size of a regular cup, while in Paraguay a cow’s empty horn is used for that purpose alongside the pumpkin and the metallic cup variations. A metallic straw is used to drink the beverage. In Argentina and Paraguay a kettle is used to add the water while Uruguayans use a thermos; strange as it may seem each one defends its method fiercely. The nasty part is related to hygiene; if invited to drink with a group of people, then only one pumpkin is used and passed among the people. Whenever one finishes drinking, more water is added and the "mate" is passed to the next one without further formalities. The beverage is quite bitter and some people add sugar to it.

Paraguay is by far the hottest country among the three mentioned above; thus it is only natural than an iced version of the drink exists there. Less natural is that it is called "terere," apparently there is no connection between the names of the cold and hot beverages despite being variants of the same. For the cold drink, a jug with cold water is served together with a proper "mate;" if the water includes aromatic herbs then it is called "terere con yuyos."

If the variations until now weren’t confusing enough, when the border with Bolivia is crossed, then "mate" is transformed into a generic name to any tea prepared with herbs. The pumpkin disappears. There, a few leaves are added to a cup of hot water, or sometimes they are packed within regular filter paper, similarly to herb teas worldwide. The most popular infusion are "mate de coca," which is prepared with coca leaves and "trimate," and infusion prepared with three different herbs. Usually these are coca, anis and "manzanilla."

Did I mention they find terms as cappuccino, late and espresso confusing?

In the hottest month of the year, by noon, I arrived to Asuncion for the first time. As I approached downtown my excitement grew, because the place reminded me of a much loved city. A wide, lazy river delimited it on one side, the houses were low and often there were huge gaps among them. Any non-constructed patch of land seemed to have been conquered by lush, wild vegetation. Many of the people around had attractive, dark skin and slightly slanted eyes. A digital thermometer at the central plaza showed forty-four Celsius and it was horridly humid; water seemed to be the place essence.

"It is like Vientiane, the Laotian capital," I silently summarized while I left my luggage at the room that was awaiting me.

After a quick snack at the Lido Bar, I crossed the street to the central plaza and decided to make a quick survey of the center despite the heat and the bright, burning sun. The first hours in a place provide the strongest, more long-lasting impressions and I wanted to take advantage of that.

The Plaza de los Heroes was a typical colonial one, except for the fact that two perpendicular streets divided it in quarters and that one of the corners – next to the Chile and Palma junction and to the Lido Bar – was occupied by the Panteon de los Heroes (Heroes Pantheon). The last was a ghastly reminder of the country bloody and disastrous wars; avoiding it, I walked around the plaza and found the regular grid of streets so common in colonial towns. The few people around moved slowly and the gaps between following cars was of whole minutes. The fact that it was Sunday afternoon for sure contributed to the desolation; the place looked unnaturally empty, almost ghostly so. Dogs and cats were absents and birds could not be heard. Was it the heat?

Returning to Chile Street I headed for the riverside; after a few blocks the regular streets’ grid broke apart and the 19th century cathedral appeared at the right side. I did a mental note to visit its museum at the first opportunity, crossed the Plaza de la Constitucion – again, divided by several streets – and found in front of me the Congreso Nacional (National Congress). The imposing building blocked the sight of the languidly blue river, but walking to the left trough the Avenida Republica quickly corrected that. I had been warned beforehand by the hotel concierge about this area and the reason soon became evident. Groups of young people stood by the corners and followed my advance with a predators’ interest. I put my camera away and began walking faster. The well guarded Palacio de Gobierno (Government Palace) came soon into sight. It seemed too big for such a sleepy town and was the clearest sign to the country former importance. In front of it was Casa Viola, a historic museum closed on Sundays.

Few other sights were of particular interest, except for the railway station on Eligio Ayala Street. It dates back to 1856 and was one of the first in the continent. It was relatively well preserved and well worth the extra few blocks I walked to reach it.

At a slow pace – with time to admire the colonial surroundings and to avoid getting overheated – the walk took a couple of hours.