Asunción, Paraguay - Walking

Asunción has not been the non-stop robbery fest that it was described to be by our friendly waiter in Filadelfia. We choose not to cut through the not-very-well-lit Plaza Uruguaya after dark, but that's the only concession we've made to caution because that's the only place that's looked even slightly shady to us. Until tonight.

Michael and I were innocently heading back to our hotel after dinner. We were walking along a mostly deserted side-street, the one favored by a couple of modestly-clad prostitutes, when we saw someone coming towards us diagonally across the street. He moved purposefully and it was clear he meant to intercept us.

It was the French half of the Euro couple. And he was carrying a tetrapak carton of red wine. Up until then I'd wondered if the Euros were avoiding us as studiously as we were avoiding them, possibly even making disparaging comments about our fake visit to Brazil. But apparently not. The French guy had a big, drunken, "yay, friends are here!" smile on his face.

We exchanged small talk and Michael made sure to find out where they were staying (just down the street) and when they were leaving Asunción (a couple of days after us), and then Michael said, "Ok, well, bye," and steered me away down the street. Naturally I started to feel bad as soon as we left, but what can you do? If we'd hung out with them, I would have regretted it later. After that encounter, we never walked down that street again, day or night.

So because Asunción doesn't have big, obvious Macchu Pichu-style attractions, we decided to put some purpose to our usual meanderings and take the Lonely Planet's walking tour. We felt like virtuous, hard-working visitors as we set off, guide in hand, to see Asunción's sights.

Across from the Palacio Legislativo, clustered along the water's edge and practically in the river itself, was a group of "viviendas temporadas" aka a shantytown. It is possible to view these viviendas from a street-level plaza, without having to enter the small neighborhood, so we walked over to have a look.

A guy selling some snack or other from a cart tried to stop us. "Peligroso," he warned. ("Dangerous.") He made some weird motion around his nose that set off at least an hour's worth of speculation about what that nose-motion might have meant. We thanked him, but it didn't matter, because had no intention of going down and actually walking among the shacks.

We were concerned about Michael's pricy camera but we also didn't want to be too obvious about sightseeing people's poverty. So we just leaned over the wall and stared at these houses built out of trash, sinking into the mud and thought the usual "guess our life isn't so bad" thoughts.

There were more of these small structures over by the dock where we'd first entered Asunción. We wandered down there and looked around a bit, but there wasn't much to see and the sun was strong. A small, filthy boy approached us for money and Michael gave him some. Probably he lived in one of those houses. He looked dazed as he wandered away.

It was hot and I was feeling slightly pernicious, so we stopped into a little lunch spot for a soda. We got a large Pulp. I attempted to pronouce this correctly, saying "Poolp," but I still managed to miss the mark and the waitress corrected me. "Poo?" Um... yeah. I would like some poo, please. Some grapefruit flavored poo. Luckily it tasted better than it sounded. Kind of like Orangina.

Three young boys came in and started making the rounds of the tables. They got lucky with a table of lunching businessmen, who apparently told them they could each have a sandwich. But when they got to the counter, the waitress wasn't falling for the ol' "those guys said we could have a sandwich" routine. One of the men turned around and waved a hand in a way that was both magnanimus and disinterested. She gave them their sandwiches in a bag and I watched them all the way down the street as one handed out the sandwiches to the others and they ate them as they walked.

I looked again at the businessmen. They were too far away to eavesdrop on, but they didn't give the impression that they were thinking of the boys once the sandwiches were handed out. I wished we had bought a sandwich for that other little boy.

The rest of the walking tour kind of fell apart. The directions had us criss-crossing parks and making little loops so as to take in buildings that just weren't that interesting. I kept wanting to sit down and Michael tried to be patient but was sick of having to keep stopping all the time. It was ridiculously hot.

We ended up walking back to the centro and renting some terreré works from a wizened old lady. She seemed tickled to have attracted a couple of gringos and chuckled to herself as she poured our mate and demonstrated the procedures. We took the stuff - a large thermos full of icewater of unknown origin, the tall, metal cup a quarter full of mate, and the bombilla - over to a shady bench.

Down the way, a lone man sat sipping his drink, and across from us, three giggly teenage girls passed the cup back and forth. I wonder if it's exciting for Paraguayan teenagers the first time they go and drink terreré in the park with their friends instead of their parents.

The terreré wasn't working for us. We couldn't seem to position the bombilla properly and we were getting the same debris that we'd had with the Euros. It was frustrating. Still, the tea was nice and cold and we were sitting in a shady spot in the park and peoplewatching again. No one could look at us and tell we weren't doing it right.