Encarnación, Paraguay - Decadence in the Sinking City

We decided to stay in Encarnación one more day. The luxury, the sheer decadence of "wasting" a day when we have so few left is just stunning for me. We've taken extra days before, but this is different. Like the difference between savoring one $20 truffle and scarfing down a pound of Russell Stover on sale at Walgreens. Not that Encarnacion is such a beautiful, fabulous city. But it's being slowly swallowed by the Rio Paraná as a result of the existence of the Yacyretá Dam, and that makes it interesting. Since we arrived in the evening and spent the next day out of town we didn't really get to see much, and we want to see Encarnación before it's too late.

In the morning we walked down to the waterfront, making our way through the market area. This was row after row of stores with items not only escaping out onto tables on the sidewalks, but hanging from the beams of the corrugated metal awnings and piled onto more tables at the curb, so that we walked through literal tunnels of merchandise, ducking to avoid dangling shirtsleeves.

It was cheap junk mostly, bins of underwear, t-shirts with mangled English expressions printed across the front, sneakers with unrecognizable logos, except for the occasional shops selling wildly expensive digital cameras, video cameras and Discmen. And then there was the food section, racks of eggs with feathers and muck still attached, shiny bright mounds of produce, and big sacks of true "from scratch" grains.

The waterfront was gross. It reminded me of Biloxi after Hurricane Katrina, muddy water oozing up over the cracked remains of sidewalks. But this seemed to be a very slow process and there was no destruction exactly, just abandonment of the land that was no longer land. On the fingers of solid earth that still reached into the water, there were still sidewalks and cars and inhabited houses.

On one abandoned and shrinking bit of land, a horse grazed. The grass was wet and squishy and when we walked on it I had to hold up my pantslegs to keep them from getting muddy. There was a faint but unclean smell of sour decay in the air. It seemed unhealthy, but it did not appear to be bothering the two little boys who ran past us barefoot.

It was not possible to move from one finger of land to another without walking back into town and making our way through the streets and back down to the water. In this way we found ourselves in a little square with a statue in the middle and some kids playing futbol on the desolate concrete. A road led down to the river here, and a family waded and splashed in a narrow weed-free gap at the water's edge. We could see Posadas, Argentina in the distance, skyscrapers across the river.

From here we could follow the waterfront and we found a little built up promenade area with a wide wall separating the sidewalk from the rocks on the other side. A small tree grew out of the water. It did not look like an old tree, and it did not look like it belonged in the water, but it was still green and strong.

Further on was where Encarnación's busses go to be washed. Boys in shorts and nothing else slopped buckets of river water over, through, and under the busses until it ran clean, across the sidewalk and back into the river.

But Encarnación is not all a mess of houses about to float away. Just a few blocks up from the water are some fantastic houses, enormous and pristine and extremely fancy. High gates, extravagant landscaping, three-car garages. A security guard posted in front of one yelled at Michael when he tried to take a photo from across the street.

We had a late lunch of Chinese food and French fries (storing the leftovers in our Frigobar!) followed by Internet at a place run by an English-speaking Swedish guy who let us use our laptop. Then I watched Patch Adams on TV and re-twisted my hair, which is a three-hour task that I dread and won't do unless there is television. I really needed to take care of that because tomorrow we are leaving for sure for Cuidad del Este.