Para, Para Para-guay

Para, Para Para-guay
Laguna Blanca, Paraguay

Laguna Blanca, Paraguay

I am pretty sure that Paraguay is probably one of the least visited placed in Latin America, the few travellers that we had met that had visited had done so across the border from Brazil and had just spent an hour or two in Cuidad Del Este and reports were terrible. We initially declared Paraguay a no-go zone and struck it off our list. Thankfully after a bit of our own research we realised that the travellers we had been speaking to were idiots and we couldn’t miss this little country.

We started our journey in Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay and as we drove from the airport it was astounding just how different Paraguay felt to anywhere else in South America, it felt more like Asia with a mix of ramshackle buildings next to a bright and shiny Dominos Pizza shops.

Asuncion was just a flying visit for us, we stayed in the wonderful El Nomada Hostel which is up there as one of our top10 hostels we have visited and we just had time to head to the Mercado 4 market which was like walking around the streets of Bangkok, with fake designer clothes, cheap bits and bots, food, drink and even rabbits and guinea pigs for sale. The second day we were in Asuncion we encountered some of the wettest craziest rain we have seen in months so wet and defeated we headed to the local shopping mall with our hostel friend Al and sat for hours putting the world to rights eating pizza and drinking beer in an Austrian style beer Keller.

The following day we were off on another adventure, just 5 hours by bus from Asuncion lay Laguna Blanca and the Conservation project of Parra La Tierra, this is one of the most visited parts of the country due to its beaming reviews in Lonely Planet. It turns out that seemingly the director of PLT writes for Lonely Planet, hmmmm!

Our bus journey from Asuncion to the town of Santa Rosa left a lot to be desired. Gone were the lovely Uruguayan buses and here were their run down and bedraggled Paraguayan cousins. Whilst we managed to get a seat unlike many who stood for the 5 hour journey, we were seated next to the toilet which had the stiffest door of any bus in the world and I turned into the toilet monitor for the duration of the journey opening and closing the toilet for every small child that needed a wee every 3 minutes. I got through more hand sanitiser on this journey than I did during 9 days in the Gobi with no running water! Aside from the toilet the journey was ok, we were following our route on Google Maps so we knew when to get off and then about 45 minutes before our destination the young girl sat behind us proceeded to projectile vomit all over the aisle of the bus. The stench of cheesy bread was pretty foul and just got worse and worse as it got hotter and the vomit got trodden further around the bus, thankfully google maps was bang on and after 45 minutes of retching we made it to Santa Rosa.

Santa Rosa is the closest town to PLT, just over an hours drive down a fairly lumpy bumpy unpaved road, little did we realise that this would be the last we saw of the outside world for our one month stay.

PLT was somewhere that we were super excited to head to, after our amazing experience looking after sea turtles in Borneo we were hopeful that PLT was going to provide us with a similar but land based experience. What we didn’t realise was that PLT is more aimed at University Students carrying out projects for their degrees and masters and is more of a research centre than a conservation site meaning that most times something cool or interesting was discovered it ended up in a jar of formaldehyde in the museum.

PLT is located in one of the last remaining patches of Atlantic Forest in Paraguay, having been chopped down and destroyed to make way for cattle ranches, soy and eucalyptus plantations across Brazil and Paraguay. The little patch of forest that is left here is nowhere near big enough to support some of the amazing animals that should be living here such as jaguars. There are two troops of capuchin monkeys which are the subject of extensive work by the onsite primatologist Becca but sadly they are still in the process of being habituated to humans, so most times you see them or get close to them in the forest they about turn and make a hasty retreat, although towards the end of our stay and after several hours spent in the forest I got to see one of the troops banging fruit on a tree, a never before seen behaviour here and a very rare treat indeed.

As volunteers at the project site we were dependent mainly on the interns to let us join them in helping with their projects and we enjoyed getting involved checking pitfall traps for reptiles and measuring trees in the forest to identify the differences in the trees that the monkeys use as their sleeping sites. However one problem we encountered was that most of the interns projects were coming to an end so they were mainly report writing. Thankfully we were taken under the wing of the museum curator Stefan, who managed to keep us entertained and occupied for our entire stay. From de-legging butterflies from the collection to send their DNA to form part of the barcode for life which is being created in Argentina to watching snakes and small rodents being prepared for the collection we played a role in everything the museum could offer.

Life at PLT was definitely not easy, we lived in a spider (and at times rat infested) barn which had four bedrooms around the central kitchen and dining area, for the first time in nearly 7 years Tim and I were separated into the Boy and Girl dorms, much to the discontent of the boys who had to put up with Tim’s snoring for a month. The first week was bitterly cold, every night we were going to bed at 7pm wearing our thermals, grabbing every spare blanket that was going begging and even sleeping with a coke bottle full of boiling water as there were not enough hot water bottles to go around. Thankfully the second week the sun came out and despite it being the middle of winter we had a heatwave which lasted our entire stay. We all started to stay up past 7pm playing cards and generally life was better.

Food at PLT was an interesting affair, it was literally feast or famine. BBQ pig nights were always the best (though not for the only vegetarian!) or Manioca Mondays were the highlights of everyone’s week when our cook prepared the most delicious fresh manioca (a type of root vegetable like Taro) and served portions which were likely to break the plates. Then we faced breakfast and Sundays. Breakfast was two frozen bread rolls that you had to cook in a frying pan, heating them to thaw them without turning them to charcoal was something of a daily challenge. Sundays were the most depressing food days, not only did we have to fend for ourselves as it was the cooks day off but we were only allowed ‘Tortillas’ for lunch, whilst you think of tortillas as the crispy delicious Mexican variety or nice flatbreads in the UK, Paraguayan tortillas are essentially fried batter. Tasteless, greasy and just unappealing. Dinner was also a depressing affair of leftovers from the freezer (which usually contained more dead animals waiting to be prepared than it did food), we were on occasion lucky that we had all been so famished during the week that there were no leftovers and pasta, curry or fried rice made it onto the menu. The food would not have been such a problem were it not for the fact that the mark up on the snack and treats in the tuck shop ranged from 100%-300% depending on what you wanted. Needless to say our tuck shop bill was very low.

Don’t get me wrong our time at PLT was not all bad, although during the week that we spent cleaning and painting the house and museum we probably would have said that it was absolutely that bad.

One highlight was when we went out into Nightjar Land, about a 45 minute drive from the house, this is one of the only breeding grounds for the white wing nightjar. These birds were absolutely beautiful and they are found just sat resting on the ground or on top of termite nests during
the night. They are the subject to ongoing studies which thankfully just mean that they are radio tagged rather than dispatched and stuffed. The nightjars are very sensitive to light so a simple torchlight to the eyes leaves them stunned and just sit where they are. We went out twice to see the nightjars and on the second trip found a new resident who had not been tagged before and earned himself a nice shiny ankle cuff.

The bird nets were also a regular source of entertainment for us, they were set up on a path at the back of the house and needed to be checked at 10 minute intervals, if any birds were caught they needed to be untangled, measured, photographed for ID purposes and released. Getting to hold these tiny little birds was amazing, although I was so nervous that I was concerned that I may drown them in my sweaty hands. I usually opted to take on the role of measurer. One day Bruce the volunteer coordinator came and got us as he had caught an interesting bird in the nets, a Pearly Vented Totty Tyrant. We were all excited to see the Pearly Vented Totty Tyrant but as Tim attempted to get it out of the bird bag it slipped through his fingers and escaped. Sadly we never did get to see a Pearly Vented Totty Tyrant. We did however get to see some cool birds, some blue, some yellow, some with long pointy beaks and most with sharp claws.

Our last week a new intern arrived who was doing a project on bats and the same principle applied to bats as it did birds and we were lucky to see a beautiful tropical screech owl that got caught in the bat nets along with several bats of all shapes and sizes.

One unwelcome visitor that we received into the house was a giant centipede, the monster of our nightmares that we had previously met on Pom Pom Island. This time rather than just beheading this evil monster that has terrifying venom with potential flesh eating properties, Tim got to prepare it as a museum specimen. It was dispatched in a death jar, a tiny little gas chamber, and once dead it was carefully positioned on a piece of wood and then injected with formaldehyde to preserve the tissue. Tim was as pleased as punch with his monstrous creation.

Insects were definitely the most prevalent creatures we had during our stay, we had moths the size of our hands, tarantulas and butterflies aplenty. Each night we would set up the white light to attract moths and flying insects in the hope that there would be some interesting visitors. Despite my hate of anything flying, I became slightly obsessed with the moth light and eventually got somewhat used to having an array of moths and bugs in my hair. My favourite visitor to the moth light was the Rococo Toad, this giant the size of a dinner plate, used to just sit at the back of the white sheet and eat all the visitors, I guess we built a Michelin Star restaurant in the back yard as he soon moved into the old broken down shed and just sat at the sheet most nights. Our resident spider experts Brogan and Hatty provided no end of tarantula entertainment and even managed to find the cutest little white spider I have ever seen that spent its days pretending to be a flower. Stefan caught some interesting pets for the museum which I became slightly infatuated by, Ant lions, these little creatures live in the sand and make a funnel down to where they sit. This funnel is the perfect design and angle for ants to just tumble down to waiting ant lion, who like a monster from the deep grabs the poor unsuspecting ant and drags it underground. It is actually like watching the 80’s movie Tremors.

One of my least favourite tasks during our stay was butterfly catching. I love butterflies, and so being set the task of catching, killing and pinning as many as we could in order to make a display for the museum was not really the best task for me and so I became a catcher and Tim became the killer. However this pattern was messed up when we caught a huge and beautiful blue butterfly which Tim had apparently killed and when he passed it to me it flapped its wings and I could still feel its body pumping, a small part of me died as I squeezed that butterfly. Thankfully with the expert pinning skills of Ellen we managed to perfectly preserve all the butterflies who gave their lives for that museum display which actually turned out looking pretty amazing.

During our month we had one week of madness when it was all hands on deck to get the house, museum and grounds in tip top condition and had to make it look like the aquaponics was not just a mosquito breeding ground as we had some visitors coming. No one knew who they were or exactly what they were coming for, all we knew was that they were called IFED. After a week of cleaning, scrubbing and building to try to pretend that we were not living in a barn our guests finally arrived. Sadly we were not enlightened with any introduction and had to set about our own enquiries as to who were IFED and what were they here for. It turns out that IFED are an awesome bunch of people, led by the super enthusiastic and charitable Patricia, she has set up IFED which stands for International Fund for Economic Development and she and her husband Sherwin travel the globe supporting small non profit, non governmental projects which are centred around the community and they provide equipment and books to help enrich their education. PLT had begun some interaction with the local schools but this suddenly ramped up on the arrival of IFED and we had a group of school kids come and visit us at the house and were all invited to a local school for International Children Day which was a real treat having not left the camp for weeks.

We really enjoyed having IFED around and it was a pleasure getting to know them, Patricia a retired financial officer who has dedicated her life to making the world a better place, one village at a time had some incredible stories about her travels. Sherwin a retired human rights lawyer who during his career had actually met Martin Luther King and Kate who was on her first ever IFED road trip after deciding to change her life after her divorce and is actually the leading lawyer on Obama Care in the US. These were some pretty interesting and incredible people to say the least.

There was one small project that we just started for fun to entertain ourselves and that was to try and capture something on a camera trap. These traps are tied to trees in the forest or anywhere that there might be tracks and left, the sensor sets off the camera whenever something passes and we just set it up and hoped for the best. Our first effort was a failure and we got nothing but horses and tourists, but we soon got in the swing of things. We thought that we had set up the camera over an active armadillo burrow, but it turned out to be a pair of very cute burrowing owls who had moved in to an empty armadillo burrow. Our final night we tried one last location and the camera was not quite quick enough but we did manage to get the tail of a crab eating fox.

Tim did make his escape from the camp on day when our friend Alan that we had made in Asuncion came through on his Moto Loco, the Blue Donkey. He took Tim and Ellen into town for some much needed beer and chicken.

In amongst the disorganised madness there were elements of the weeks at PLT that were really well designed and managed, every Wednesday afternoon was Journal Club and the interns would each read and summarise an interesting article, after dinner on Fridays was discussion one week and trivia the next, Trivia was potentially my favourite event of each fortnight. I love trivia and thankfully had a very successful team.

Our month at PLT was made by the people that were there, from the visitors from IFED to the other volunteers and interns, without the great friends we made we probably would have been back on the bus in a matter of days. Although there were some visitors that came and went who were just a bit odd, a young Swedish couple who we nicknamed the twins as they were literally joined at the hip every minute of every day, even to
the extent that they shared a rickety top bunkbed, a shower and 99.9% of the time a chair. I have never been one for Public Shows of Affection, these two clearly had no problem with it as they sat at dinner licking each other’s faces, odd, very very odd. However the twins were nothing compared to a visitor that arrived in the last couple of days of our stay. Tim. Yes as you can imagine my Tim was not impressed at there being another Tim and even before he arrived had given him the nickname, Fake Tim. Sadly in just two short days Fake Tim an English soil lecturer in his fifties managed to acquire himself the nickname Arrogant Alcoholic Tim, as he drank all night getting more and more rude then slept through the next day to get over his hangover. Usually we would have been delighted at the news that he had decided to leave after just two days, but sadly this meant that he was leaving with us. After our sad goodbyes Stefan took to the wheel, with Alcoholic Tim in the front giving us all the cold shoulder (we are not sure if he was embarrassed by his behaviour or just hated us) and me, Sergio and Tim in the back like naughty children. Thankfully after a painfully silent 20 minute journey Stefan saw a little old lady who must have been at least 112 years old hitch hiking so he picked her up. Alcoholic Tim was put in the back of the pick-up and we all relaxed and enjoyed the next 40 minutes of the journey with Nana.

At the bus station Tim got a belly full of chicken and despite it only being 7am alcoholic Tim got a belly full of beer, oh dear me.

Our time in Paraguay had been interesting, if we knew then what we know now we probably wouldn’t have gone to PLT and would have spent our month exploring Paraguay as we saw nothing at all of the local culture and little of the wildlife either, but there is always a positive to every situation and looking on the bright side the waistbands on our jeans were considerably looser!

Our onward bus to Cuidad Del Este was significantly better than the first, there was no sticky toilet door, there was no vomit and 5 hours later we were there, we just had to negotiate a taxi across the border to get us to Brazil, how hard could that be???