paraguay

[original post May 28, 2007]

Location: Pedro Juan Caballero, Bella Vista, Paraguay

Here is a recap of my first ten days in South America:

I arrived in Buenos Aires on May 14 and spent the night at my host's place. The next day my host, Luis, Andy (a scientist from University of Florida), and I hopped on a plane to Asuncion, Paraguay. We stayed a night in the capital because they had lost some of our luggage (luckily we were able to get it the next day), then we set out for the border of Paraguay/Brazil. Here we spent time in two small border towns Bella Vista (Bela Vista for Brazilians) and Pedro Juan Caballero (Ponta Pora for Brazilians).

Here I was inundated with Portuguese, of which I know very little. (I did manage to pick up on important words like obrigada (thank you) and sobre mesa (desert)). Nevertheless, a lot of my time on the Brazilian side was spend pointing and grunting.

As far as work goes, I spent all daylight hours digging up anthills. We would pop open a mound to see if it was infested with a certain parasite. We ended up finding only about 10 after the 10 days.

The food was excellent. I am in love with a good Brazilian breakfast (Argentine breakfasts are scant to say the least). I have also picked up on drinking mate--the Argentine tea-like national beverage.

I didn't do a lot of sight seeing in Paraguay, but I did see a pretty neat national forest. I also got a glimpse of some road-side toucans and rheas.

After ten days, I got on a plane and was shipped back to Buenos Aires, Argentina.