A Bit of a Detour

Here I am in Asuncion, roughly 500km off course.

This is entirely due to two pieces of wildly inaccurate information provided in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

The first misleading statement was that the bus would put me down in Filadelfia. No-one, it seems, told the driver and he declined to alter course to reach Asuncion via Filadelfia. The best he would offer was to drop me where I could get a local bus to travel the 20-odd km to Filadelfia.

Here the second frustrating element came into play. I had no Paraguayan cash. The money changers at the Santa Cruz bus terminal did not have any Paraguayan guaranies, but one of them assured me that there would be an opportunity to swap US dollars for local currency at the border. He was wrong.

Somehow I did not think that a country bus, if one appeared on a Sunday, would take kindly to being paid in foreign currency, so I stayed on the bus all the way to Asuncion. Here the bus station is plentifully supplied with casas de cambio and I now have a bulging pocket full of many thousands of guaranies. When I tell you that it costs 1,000G to use the toilet you will understand that the guarani is a very small unit.

The guide book describes the journey from Santa Cruz to Asuncion as a bone-jarring ride over the extra-rough Trans-Chaco Highway, or some other such enticing phrases. Lonely Planet promises that the full journey takes at least 30 hours. Sorry, Lonely Planet, my watch made it 18 and a half hours and three small meals are served along the way.

The bus pulled back five minutes early, surely a record for Bolivia. The passenger list had been checked so I believe everyone was on board. Unusually, the bus was only half full. Once the Santa Cruz ring road had been negotiated the driver gunned the motor and set off as though to set a record for the route. And the going was easy on a well marked, sealed highway. We roared past trucks, other buses and even the odd car.

I kept waiting for the he-men-only rugged terrain to start. It took so long that I tried to estimate our speed by timing the passage of kilometer posts. This gave an estimate of 70kph. Maybe it was the tone of the motor that made me think we were going faster than that.

The smooth ride encouraged me to fall asleep. I woke up again a bit after 2:00am, 6 hours after departure. We were still on tarmac and a road sign told me that the Ibibobo customs post was only 60km distant. About 10kms after this we finally hit the dirt road and it was pretty rough. But only for 10-15 kms. After that it was still unsealed, but smooth enough to allow for rapid progress once again.

Bolivian formalities were very solemnly performed, partly by the light of smokey lamps. My heart fell a bit. If the Paraguayans were this thorough I was going to have a big job explaining why I wanted to change to my UK passport. The immigration office is in Mariscal Estagarribia, well beyond the border. I didn´t see any signs, "You are now entering Paraguay", but a customs officer boarded the bus and made sure the passengers matched the manifest.

Then I slept again. I woke at 6:00 in the pre-dawn light. We were stopped for yet another official process. This journey was absolutely plagued with pauses at police posts and the like, where the co-driver would leap out with a handful of papers and mysterious beaurocracies would be performed in a little hut. I think this check involved a customs officer and opening the luggage compartments.

Even more mysteriously, there was tarmacadam before us. This wasn´t right. I was promised wild, untamed, unsealed roads until Filadelfia. A glimpse of a road sign revealed that it was still more than 100km to Mariscal Estagarribia. At 70kph we would get there at 7:30 ish.

I watched a big, red sun come up. I tried to photograph it, but no red orb could the camera see. Then I watched the scenery. If I was being cheated of my discomfort at least I could enjoy the wildness of the Chaco.

It wasn´t 100% wild. There were signs of occasional farm buildings and fence lines, with the odd group of cattle. But mostly it was scrubland with no evidence of human activity. And it was FLAT. I had read that Paraguay is flat and it is true. Maybe not as ironed-looking as parts of Holland, but on either side of the road, as far as the eye could see the ground was innocent of hills.

In "The Drunken Forest" Gerald Durrell describes a Chaco tree with a bulbous, bottle-shaped trunk. there weren´t forests of them, but there were plenty of specimens. And I can add to the description. At this time of year the trees are bare of leaves but have bright, white decoration of what I suppose are flowers. The first one I saw made me think a flock of white birds were perched in the tree.

So we purred along this smooth, level, straight, fast road to Mariscal Estagarribia. There we turned in to yet another customs establishment. And we really got the treatment. These customs officers didn´t smile at all, and while they were courteous in a very formal way, one was in full camoflauge gear with a pistol at his hip and a label on his uniform to tell us that he was a special agent. He didn´t have to act aggressive to be intimidating. Several wore what looked like flak jackets.

All passengers had to disembark, claim baggage and stand beside it. The first few to be selected got searched more thoroughly than anything I´ve ever seen before. One guy had some small cans of what looked like baby food. They were all weighed in the palm of the hand, shaken and one of them was opened. The bus was gone over inside and out. My day pack was virtually emptied, but I think he was getting tired by the time I opened the big pack for him and he merely sqeezed the plastic bags of clothes. Interestingly, he didn´t appear to notice the compartment in the day pack where I keep my return air tickets and some cash. It must be a good hiding place.

After repacking our bags we went over to Immigration. I had determined to be friendly and hope for the best. I walked in and tried out a Guarani greeting. My pronunciation was awful, but the two immigration officers recognised the effort and smiled. A good start. And then I couldn´t believe my luck. I presented my UK passport and the officer simply tutted at the bus company list, crossed out my NZ passport number and wrote in the UK one. They seemed very puzzled that they couldn´t find my Bolivian stamps, but they didn´t ask so I told no lies and finally they shrugged their government agency shoulders and stamped me into Paraguay.

Having chosen to ride on to Asuncion and get some cash, I then had to establish how to really get to Filadelfia. Several companies offer the route. All the buses leave in the evening and put you down in Filadelfia in the wee hours. So I braved the phone system, booked a hotel room and explained that I would arrive at 2:00am. The male receptionist calmly repeated the information back to confirm it.

So I shall soon retrace my steps back into the less populous NW of Paraguay. Hopefully I shall have a nice bed to collapse into and then tomorrow I can see what possibilities exist to get off the beaten track in the Chaco.