Among the Mennonites

North of the capital and things get really isolated. On a six hour bus ride through the Chaco- a sort of palm savannah with vultures circling overhead (waiting to pick off tourists when the buses break down) we went through perhaps five settlements. These consisted of two or three houses made of logs, a hammock stretched between some trees, a tarpaulin, a few chickens, a ribby cow and a camp fire. Quite what these people do out in this wilderness I am not sure but everyone seemed happy enough staring at the buses from the shade of their trees. Our final destination was the town of Concepción. Stepping off the bus we were surrounded by locals wielding nunchuks- which turned out to be horsewhips. They were taxi drivers- the preferred method of public transport in town being the horse and cart, if you don't own your own scooter. Dumping our bags at the nearest hospedaje we headed off down the street to see what there was to see. Answer: not much- red dust roads, board buildings with tin roofs, and several stalls selling spitroasted chickens. The heat was incredible- like stepping into an oven- and after a short explore it became apparent that there was nothing for it except to order a cold beer and sit in the shade. Once seated, we noted that this is exactly what everyone else in town was doing.

That's pretty much how it worked for our three days there. It's too hot in the middle of the Paraguayan day to leave your little bit of shade, be that under a tree on your bit of pavement, or in our case, the only airconditioned room on the block. In the evening, we strolled down to get some roast chicken and then sat with the locals at a roadside shack and drank all their beer and played cards. On the second night we made friends with a carpenter called Nicholas who taught us some basic Guarani (the local language) and answered all our enquiries on Paraguayan life while encouraging Chris to ogle the breasts of passing local ladies. Five litres in we both agreed that we liked it here- alot. Fortunately we'd already booked our bus out of there or I think we'd still be there. Oh, and there was a crocodile in the river. They showed us mobile phone footage of the locals shotting at it with rifles. Extraordinary.

Having not been put off by the Patagonian 'Welsh' experience we headed even norther to the German Mennonite Colony of Fernheim at Filadelfia. This is even more remote and tricky to get to. Should you visit, may I personally recommend that you don't accidentally nearly leave your fiance in a service station toilet and have to shriek at the driver to stop the bus- it amuses the locals, but makes you feela trifle foolish. The insufferably wrong guidebook dubbed this one ' a suburb of Munich in the middle of a desert' which is stretching it a bit, and on arrival we were a bit nonplussed as to where exactly the Mennonites were. The Mennonites, for those of you who haven't been to Wikipedia yet, are a subgroup of Anabaptists, originally from Germany (or Russia, or Holland, depending who you believe). They eschew violence, speak a german dialect called PlattDeutsch, and are a bit Amish-ish. Expecting something akin to Amishfolk off the telly I was a trifle disappointed that they have all mod cons up here, until I realised this meant a swimming pool at the hotel. Bliss. We spent a happy hour poking around the Mennonite museum, looking at the things they had brought with them from home when the first colonists sailed up the Rio Paraguay and laid the first beachtowels down on the area in the 1929, fleeing from the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany and Bolshevik persecution in Russia. Rather brilliantly the museum included an old man's prosthetic leg (the original shot off by the aforementioned Bolsheviks), a lamp that ran on peanut oil, and Russian winter clothing- all of which was I am sure was deemed essential in the 40 degree heat of a Chaco summer. Upon arrival about 90 of the 500 or so colonists died in a typhus epidemic and were buried in hollow tree trunks. The rest farmed, milked, and sweated their way to what we see today. Some of the group- including the grandparents of the museum curator, went out and established a German Mennonite colony in China. Does anyone know if they are still there? I shall make it my task to find out.

So there you have it- Northern Paraguay is full of blonde, German speaking Germans, eating kuchen and not drinking gluhwein (because most of them don't drink- although you can buy a beer called Kaiser). I'll say it again- extraordinary.