Concepción, Paraguay - A Dog's Life

We have decided to wait for the Sunday boat to Asunción, sticking with the plan of spending some of the intervening time going to the town of Pedro Juan Caballero to visit Parque Nacional Cerro Corá. But for now we're just chilling in Concepción, which is a really chill town to chill in. I'm certainly not going to say no one does anything, but whatever they're doing, they're sure not doing it in a hurry.

And whatever anyone anywhere is doing, it's accompanied by mate or terreré. This is a tealike drink made by pouring water from a thermos into a special cup containing a vast quantity of yerba mate. The resulting drink is sipped through a metal straw called a bombilla. The wad of wet herbs is reused for each thermos of water. The cups are usually made of carved wood, sometimes covered with tooled leather, or horn. The drink made with hot water is called mate and drunk out of a short, straight cup, and the drink made with cold water is called terreré and drunk out of a taller, curved cup. Because it's so warm out, it's terreré that everyone's drinking.

(The Lonely Planet calls terreré "super-sweet" but the locals say sugar is for gringos. Just FYI.)

The drinking of mate or terreré is so important that no one strays far from his or her thermos and cup. And if this means carrying them along on the scooter, so be it. And since the passenger on the scooter is not doing anything anyway, why shouldn't he refresh the mate for the driver? It's not at all an uncommon sight to see scooters zipping down the street while the passenger(s) prepare mate.

Today we met a Peace Corps girl named Rachel. She was nice enough, but she kind of snickered at Michael's pronounciation of Asunción. "Asunshun, Asunshun... it's A-sun-cyON," she corrected. And then apparently felt bad, because she apologized for it, kind of. "I mean, I'm not trying to be snotty... it's just... Asunshun, Asunshun, it's just, you know, they pronounce it A-sun-cyON..."

I've wondered before how the elite travelers have decided which places to pronounce in English and which to pronounce the local way. Backpack around Europe and you'll hear the cooler-than-thou say Budapesht instead of Budapest but you'll never hear anyone say Paree instead of Paris. People say "Medejeen" and "Barthalona" because the locals do, but no one seems to notice or pronounce the accents on San cristóbal or Mazatlán. I'd like to be in on the meeting next time. Just, you know, to avoid these embarrassing moments.

Anyway, Rachel invited us to the park to try some terreré, but when it was time to go meet her I was engrossed in work, so Michael went by himself. In Plaza Libertad, it's possible to rent terreré paraphenalia, which they did. He learned a lot about the rituals of terreré. (I will get into those later.)

Later that night Michael and I went back to our chicken spot. In the heat of the day it's best to sit inside, but at night when it's cool, the happening spot is the tables they've set up on the median strip in the street running alongside the restaurant. You get a great view of the chickens rotating over the glowing coals and the whole intersection's worth of peoplewatching.

The food is cheap, fresh, and excellent, and we were happy to be eating there again. We ordered tons of chicken, some ribs, salad, and a huge beer to share. Everything was chill, everything was perfect. A few street dogs had formed a sniffing circle around us, but they kept a patient, respectful distance, and we looked forward to throwing them our leftovers.

One of these dogs was lying in the street. I didn't like that, but traffic was extremely light and I have seen dogs lying in the street before, everywhere we've been. I just assume they know what they're doing,like pigeons.

We were just beginning to eat when it happened.The sound, the high-pitched,desperate, terrified yelpy howl of that dog being run over. And it lasted forever, a slow-motion nightmare. Not in the sense that horrible things always seem like they're going on forever, but in the sense of a lot of actual time.

The car was a taxi, and it was moving very slowly. I didn't notice what was happening until I heard the horrible sound and then I saw the front wheel roll over the dog's legs and lower body rolling him over, and the driver was looking out the window in confusion, and the dog was still screaming, and the car was still moving, and then the dog kind of flipped over and then the <i>back</i> wheels were rolling over the dog and he was being rolled over again, crying the whole time.

As soon as the dog was finally free of the wheels, he leapt up and ran, limping and howling away down the street and out of sight.

My hands were pressed to my mouth. Michael and I looked at each other in horror. The taxi was still there, and then slowly it kept driving... around the median strip and back up the other side of the street, where the occupants stumbled drunkenly out and sat down at our restaurant for a beer.

Michael and I were still in shock. "What happened?" he said.

"He was just lying there in the middle of the street... he was in the middle of the street, I don't know why he didn't move."

I couldn't even look at my food. I just stared into space, unable to get that horrible sound out of my head. Unable to help but notice that no one else around us seemed to be surprised or upset. At least the dog will be fine, I thought. I mean, he ran away, so he couldn't have been hurt that badly and he'll recover. Yes, that's good.

"That dog's dead," Michael said, sadly.

"What?" I yelped. "But he ran away!"

"That's what dogs do. They run away and hide somewhere when they're going to die."

But- But... I tried to squeeze my thoughts back into the belief that the dog would be fine, but it was now impossible. The night was completely ruined. I ate some of my food anyway. The other dogs had all disappeard during the trauma, but a couple had wandered back in time for me to throw them some bones, feeling guilty the whole time that I was encouraging them to hang around in the street. I insisted we get another beer.

I can't believe that poor stupid dog was just lying in the middle of the road like that. I can't believe he wasn't paying attention to possible traffic. I can't believe the driver just shrugged the whole thing off so easily, or seemed to.

Well, tomorrow we're going to Pedro Juan Caballero.