A main street in Asuncion with beautiful flowering trees. We had to remind ourselves that down here April is not spring, though these trees certainly looked spring-like.
From Santa Cruz de la Sierra we caught a flight down to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. We had little idea of what to expect, as there is limited information available about tourism there; to our surprise a couple months ago when we started to plan this segment of our trip there is no Lonely Planet Paraguay. To our surprise and delight, we loved the city. After one day we decided to extend our short two-night stop to a third night, and after three days we decided to make it four. That’s always a good sign.
First the basics. Asuncion is a city of a little over half a million people, part of a metropolitan area of perhaps two million people, on the banks of the Paraguay River. It is the political, economic, and cultural center of the country and the landlocked country’s primary port. There are a few things that stand out about Asuncion.
A mile or two from our hotel was a huge and sometimes beautiful botanical garden. Lots of people walking, running, playing soccer, and just enjoying the big open spaces. I loved it.
Asuncion had some cool architecture and buildings with lots of atmosphere
Another cool and colorful building
Also noteworthy about the people and language is that even when they’re speaking Spanish we find it almost impossible to understand them. Mark, of course, has been studying Spanish off and on for a few years now, and he’s picked up quite a bit during our three-plus months in Latin America, and I can understand a fair amount even if I can’t really speak Spanish. But to me when the Paraguayans speak it sounds as though they have mouths full of marbles; it’s almost completely unintelligible. It’s almost as though we’re back in China!
OK, what else about Asuncion? It’s hot here. Really hot. As in over 90 degrees by 10:00 AM and staying there until 6:00 PM or later. Mid-April here is well into fall, but damn it was hot. Maybe it was just a hot streak, since the climate chart in Wikipedia says that the average April high in Asuncion is 83 degrees and the record high is 97.5. That seems strange to us, since the daytime temperatures were often up around 95 degrees. So whether that’s global warming or just unusual – or it’s always possible Wikipedia is wrong – it was hot while we were there.
Mostly we just walked around a lot. Paraguay has a long history of dictatorships, though they seem to have settled into something representing a democratic state since the mid-1990s. One thing dictators are good at, though, is promoting public safety (for those who don’t object to the dictatorship, at least). Maybe that’s why the city just felt so safe to walk around in, unlike some big South American cities we’ve been in. So we took advantage of it, walking to restaurants and parks and really just all over.
So there you have it. Asuncion is a lovely, lively city (except on Sundays, when everything closes), with good restaurants, nice shopping, and some nice parks. More people should discover it!
One lunch we had at a pretty fancy Italian place. Besides these glasses of grappa two things were memorable. One, the food was surprisingly bad. Two, in a private room next to the dining room – but with windows so you could see a little bit of what was going on – some guy was giving a lecture to what looked like a lot of beautiful women. Every so often another woman would walk in or out and they were all the same – relatively tall and thin; long, straight hair; insane spiked heels; tight-fitting clothes; and beautiful. As it was breaking up we asked our waiter what the story was and we learned it was a modeling agency, soliciting talent. Crazy how they all had the same look.
Then there was lunch at La Taverna Espanola. A nice enough Spanish tapas place with an amusing, funky, older decor. And then this trio walks in – an ordinary guy, a little choir boy, and her. A beautiful plus-sized woman wearing tight clothes, four-inch pink spiked heels with rhinestones (!), huge false eyelashes, and more makeup than you’ve ever seen in your life. As though she saw Tammy Faye Baker one day and said “I can do better than that.” It was like a train wreck you just couldn’t take your eyes off of.
And now back to more prosaic topics. This is the Palacio de los López, the Paraguayan presidential palace.
The city beach on the Paraguay River
We were there on a Sunday when EVERYTHING was closed. Fortunately, everything except that tapas restaurant, that is.
And a picture of me with the grappa, included here because I realized otherwise there wasn’t a single picture of either of us in Asuncion.