Loose End In LatAm

...why (again)

Another backwater of South America and another place I know I must come back to.

In fact, I just took a swift visit to Asunción, the capital, which I had been told was a bit boring...and in truth if you arrive on a Sunday, like we did, it's pretty dead, and once you've seen the sites, there isn't a whole lot more to do in the traditional tourist sense of the word. So we jumped on buses and headed to different parts of the city and out of town, along highways with buses spewing out exhaust and getting jammed up in the traffic. In all the big cities I visited so far street sellers jump on the busses hawking all sorts of stuff, but here it's utterly mekty... at one point there was a procession out numbering the passengers selling (all for around a 1000 gurarni each - about 10p) the following:

• 1 x icecream (strawberry) - rather melty
• 2 x apples
• 1 x bunch of bananas
• 1 x cup of coke (not the glass bottle because they´re returnable)
• 1 x sprite or coke (plastic bottle) for G$2000
• 300 x cotton buds
• 1 x pack of thread and needles
• 2 x pairs of socks for G$2000
• 1 x handbook on writing and letter on computer for G$5000
• 1 x icecream (chocolate) - very melty
• 1 x bath towel for G$5000
• more apples and bananas
• and I dare say a few other things I've forgotten

One great place that I have to go back to explore properly, I only saw from the bus, is the market quarter: block after block of gallerias of shops and stalls selling everything a city like Asunción needs. Thankfully I resisted the urge to jump off the bus, the exchange student I had contacted to find out a bit more about the city told me later, it's one place you really need to go without a single valuable item on you, just to be careful.

...and then it was time to get my bus across the border to Argentina, but now I'm just trying to work out just when I will get back there...


Inter-country context:
Cost of using the public lavatory in a bus station:

• Chile (Púcon): Ch$150 - 16p
• Argentina (Cordoba): Ar$1 - 18p
• Argentina (Buenas Aries): Tip only
• Uruguay (Montevideo): Tip only
• Paraguay (Asunción): G$1000 - 9p
• Paraguay (anywhere else): what toilet? just do it behind the nearest wall