Paraguay

Actually a beautiful country, but the spark didn't quite jump over for both of us. Paraguay is hardly developed for tourism, that was the main reason we decided to go there. Unfortunately, that also became a bit of a downfall for us.

It is slowly becoming summertime here, which means 40 degrees during the day and 25 degrees at night. That is not exactly ideal for camping. So that we always have a shower nearby at these temperatures, we wanted to go to campsites. But in a country where tourism doesn't mean much, it's like searching for a needle in a haystack. In addition, the roads to the campsites were often impassable without a 4x4. That was quite frustrating.

But again with a lot of luck, we found a few campsites in beautiful places.

We happened to come to Independencia. There was a campsite near a national park (which we couldn't enter because the roads there are only accessible by off-road vehicles). Independencia is a German colony, all signs here are in German and there is Schnitzel. So we thought it would be fun, but we were wrong! People here live in a small German bubble. Germans only marry Germans and the young generation learning Spanish "is actually rather unnecessary." Aha! Foreigners in a country who don't want to learn the language?! They are my favorites! Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there, often when you ask people why they emigrated, they say it was because of terrorism in Germany "it's crazy what's going on in Germany" (This sounds almost like Germans talking about dangerous South America). After talking to a few of these characters, we quickly made our way out.

Next, we drove to 'Base Camp' Tres Kandu (the highest mountain in Paraguay). Well, Base Camp was really a cute expression, the mountain is 842m high, which is remarkable for the otherwise flat Paraguay. Camping was allowed here as well. The showers and toilets were, how should I say...present.

The next day we climbed the mountain. Even though it's more like a hill, it was really exhausting at 40 degrees and high humidity (it had rained at night). At the summit, we were rewarded with a great view of Paraguay.

Then we went to the next national park, to a campsite founded by a French family. After our adventurous journey through Paraguay (German idiots, terrible roads and bridges), we allowed ourselves a day off from traveling. We have been on the road or working on the car every day for a month, and now we finally took a day to relax and work on our South American tan, which in two cases turned out to be red rather than brown. We also fell in love with the clean sanitary facilities.

To escape the crazy heat here, we will continue our journey to the south with a stopover in Buenos Aires, heading to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.

¡Hasta luego!