¿Paraguay? ¿Por que?

A mom and her fam hang out at the Plaza Independencia in Asunción.

OK, the play on words doesn´t snap, crackle or pop -- it would have been better could one say, para que, or for what? -- but it gets the message across. There is absolutely no reason to go to Paraguay.

Yes, the women here are on the whole the best looking women amongst those in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. But that´s about it.

Took this pic of a shanty town and its football field about 40 yards from the Palacio Legislativo, the Congress -- the actual building, not the grounds.

Poverty is apparent everywhere here, and to the worst degree I saw among the aforementioned countries.

There were small tent cities on the outskirts of small towns on the bus ride from Brazil to Asunción. Many of the tents were made of black plastic bags.

Vendors popped on and off a 30-minute city bus ride. The kid in the front is selling tickets to a concert and the guy behind him, in blue, is selling packs of sewing needles.

People jumped on the bus and sold pineapples, other fruit, drinks, juice, gum and phone chargers for cars.

Things are dirt cheap here. So they make up for it by using Guaranies. 100,000 guaranies are worth $20. A pack of smokes goes for 4,000 guaranies. About 90 cents. The half hour city bus ride from my hotel to the bus terminal was 2,300 guaranies -- 47 cents.

Of course, they had the obligatory protest march over something or other.

The protests here are a little weird. Numerous small groups hold their own rallies in various spots, and each march independently to a central location.

Once all together, there are angry speeches and a bizarrely high number of vendors selling food, drinks and whatnot. But they seem to enjoy having their say and I have yet to see any violence.

In any case, there certainly is no there there in Paraguay.

Boa Brazil

Jungle boy takes a break during our 8-day thrashing of Brazil.

Brazil may never be the same.

Eoin flew in Saturday to Sao Paulo and we spent most of the next 8 days touring southern Brazil in a rented car. And drinking beer in little towns. And doing our share of chowing down on local fare.

All done in Portugese, which is not understandable at all, a touch of Spanish and much sign language.

Eoin grabs an empanada, kind of a cross between a taco and a meat knish, in some hellhole in southern Brazil.

The prices of stuff and the size of the towns make Sao Paulo and the rest of the southern nation seem like two different countries.

In Sao Paulo, more than 12 million people, we ate two steaks and drank about 10 beers each ~~ for 145 reais -- or about $65. A decent hotel near the city center was 99 reais -- about $45.

In Cantagalo, a tiny town halfway from Sao Paulo to Iguazu Falls, we stayed in a hotel for 40 reais ~~ or maybe $18. We ate a bunch of shish kabob some guy cooked on a little wood-burning grill outside his tiny store, and drank a shitload of beers -- for 23 reais -- maybe $10 or $11 total.

In Assai, we suffered our worst breakdown in communication of the whole trip. Basically, it seemed they were giving us two menu choices. We picked the second, with a liter of local beer. They brought a buffet to our table, with the beer.

Flank steaks, curried chicken, rice, pasta, pepper rings (like onion rings, only with red papper), salad, chorizo sausage, and some other stuff.

The final bill? 23 reais -- maybe $11.

El gringo loco´s usual smart dress contrasts vividly with the red dirt of a farm, cut through here for the highway.

And they have red dirt here. The dirt roads, the fields, every -- the dirt is very, very red. Sweet as hell.

In the middle of nowhere stands this Eiffel Tower, with some Portguese signs for context.

Halfway back, going from Guariá to Paranepenema, we passed this one-twelfth scale Eiffel Tower. On this highway with nothing for 50 miles. Someome at some time planned to build some kind of resort and only got as far as the tower and a nice wall out front. Weirdest thing ever.

Iguazu Falls

 

Iguazu Falls, on the border of Brazil and Argentina, is sweet as hell. There´s at lest a half a mile of falls.

 

Eoin came over for a week, mostly to drink beer and lie on the beach.

 

 

Macchu Picchu

The mountain at the rear edge of the village, Wayna Picchu, looks like the head of Pacha Papa, or Father Earth, lying down and looking up at the sky. The right end is the forehead; the middle is the nose; the left is the chin.

Macchu Picchu, The Lost City of the Incas. Some pretty amazing stuff here, especially given that it was built about the time Columbus was sailing for America and was only used for 100 years.

Not especially high up by Incan terms, 7,875 ft. above sea level, Macchu Picchu was built by people who didn´t use the wheel. At all. Seriously. Don´t know if they didn´t know about it, but everyone says they didn´t use it. Hauled all that stone everywhere up there without the use of the wheel.

Everything was built on levels, with the most religiously important higher up and the less important people living lower down.

Most of the stone walls are built without cement, or mortar. They just cut the stone so well and the stones fit together so well they didn´t need mortar. And these walls, now mostly 600 years old, have withstood numerous earthquakes.

When the Spanish came, and were trying to wipe out the Incas, they couldn´t find this place. The sites they did find, they destroyed. Even some of the paths between sites were destroyed. So Peru´s pretty lucky to have this intact.

In their building, the Incas incorporated the stone around them into everything -- or sometimes just yielded to the Earth -- and went around a stone outcropping.

Tourism today threatens Macchu Picchu more than the Spanish did back in the day. They´re pretty touchy about where people walk, and freak a little if someone steps on a wall. Understandable.

They also restrict how many people can walk up Wayna Picchu everyday to 400 -- 200 at 8 a.m. and 200 at 10. People race to get up there early -- 6 a.m. -- and many walk up, leaving at 4:30 a.m. We took a bus, got there at 7 a.m. and got tickets for the 10 a.m. -- but it rained like hell about 15 minutes before and washed the walk out.