Technicolor Paraguay

I should never have mentioned the heat. I have tempted the thermometer in the worst of all ways. Having left Argentina by way of the world's easiest border control (they do not give a rat's what you bring into Paraguay) we have now spent the week melting. It is not just the heat of the heat, which is mid 30s, but the fantastic humidity of the heat which makes your pants stick to your arse and your legs stick to your chair and your hair turn into a ginger Einstein afro. There is a scene in an episode of Star Trek where Counsellor Troi devolves into some sort of frog-human hybrid and goes to live in a bathtub. That's me this week. It's hot enough to melt both my shoes and my resolve to do anything. It's hot enough for Chris to agree to sit in the shade and drink 4 litres of beer with me. When the wind blows, it's like someone putting the hairdryer on in your face. In short, it's really hot. But there's Christmas decorations everywhere, which is all wrong.

Happily we have managed some short bursts of activity. In Encarnacion, we visited some ruined Jesuit missions. Lots of nice brickwork. No other visitors. I remember once my stepfather got a machine where we could print our own labels and for a few days the whole family went crazy making little stickers that said 'video' and 'biscuit tin' and 'sister' and stuck them everywhere. I mention this because I get the feeling this is what the over-enthusiastic folks who draw up the World Heritage List got up to in South America. EVERYTHING is on the damn list. In this case, although they have managed to provide no information and no context for the ruins, I can see what they were up to. There really isn't much in Paraguay for people to come and look at. Some nice brickwork is pretty much the sum of historical sites.

Neither this nor the heat should stop people from visiting though, because what Paraguay lacks in obvious tourist draws it makes up for with the fact that there are no obvious tourist draws and therefore-brilliantly- no tourists. This is South America at its (almost) unspoilt best. All the fun stuff is found in observing everyday life, especially out in the countryside which is just too picturesque to be true. In fact, I spent ages staring out at very green fields and very red earth, very brown rivers and very blue skies, trying to figure out why it seemed familiar. Then I remembered: it's the opening scenes of Gone with the Wind. Big plantations, old mansion houses, nicely positioned cows, all done in glorious technicolor. We caught a local bus out to a small town and went into the gas station to ask when the connecting bus would arrive. In about an hour, we were told. So we sat by the side of the road playing ball with rolled up socks and watching people take things on and off the buses.On the hour, the man from the gas station came out, got into another crumbling rustbucket and drove us to the next village. He came back especially to pick us up from the ruins. I loved that.

Asuncion, the capital, seems to have been put together with leftover bits from all the other capital cities in South America. It has a nice smattering of old buildings, including some huge colonial mansions on the main road into town, which seem to have been made for verandahs and people wearing linen to drink iced teas in the heat of the early evening. There's a wide, slow river perspiring away in the background, breeding those lovely dengue-carrying mosquitoes, and some nice leafy squares. There's also grinding poverty everywhere- half the local population seem to have no shoes, and in the middle of Plaza Uruguay there's a huge shanty town with tents made of plastic and washing lines hanging between the trees, and filthy kids playing in the roads. It's hard to think of another place where the words 'faded grandeur' are so apt: Asuncion was larger than Buenos Aires for a good few years. Nowadays all the bus companies sell you tickets to BA (a mere 18 hours away) and Asuncion seems to be having a permanent siesta, although there are signs that things are beginning to change. They've switched on to air conditioning, which is a boon- we've spent a lot of time looking at things in shop that we can't afford and don't want in order to avail ourselves of the lovely cool air. Every few days there is a citywide power cut because there's not enough power in the grids to keep all the fans running. Lots of people eat their lunch in cafeterias in the department stores where you can get a buffet style meal paid for by the kilogram. They've even opened a British pub. Visit now, before it's too late.