Loose End In LatAm

The bits between Argentina and Brazil

Sadly these two countries get mostly ignored by the world and tourists too, in part due to the richness of their neighbours. In fact for the most part all that any one can tell you about Uruguay is that they won the first World Cup, and as for Paraguay is only that it´s somewhere in South America. However, despite the relative poverty of these two countries, they are both rich in and beautiful in their own ways.

Any way, here´s a quick update on me in them, although I shall write more about them, what I´ve been upto and post some images, in a couple of days time.

For the last week or two I have been jumping from place to place, pushed around a bit by the very changable weather in autumnal Uruguay, so I´ve moved further north for a short stay in Asunción, Paraguay´s captial.


Some bits about Uruguay:

A wonderful country and lovely people, but even a the Uruguan girl that worked in tourism I met in Punta Del Este told me there was nothing to see in the middle of the country, so I travelled up and down the Atlantic coast, between Montevideo to Chuy.

A wet Easter weekend in a relatively deserted Punta Del Este made it the fluff dissappointments are made of, but the deserted, blustery but sunny Punta Del Diablo is the stuff of dreams, and one of the most wonderfully chilled places I have been lucky enough to have been in my life. Although finding a dead seal and masses of dead beetles washed up on the otherwise deserted beach wasn´t much fun.
Top tip: If you´re in Punta Del Diablo ever, go to El Viejo y La Mar restaurant, and say hi to Ernesto and Pampita (his dog) from me.


Asunción, Paraguay

I arrived overnight from Montevideo yesterday morning. Sundays in Latin America are a bad time to arrive in any town, they are always very quiet, but as the heat of the day rose it became all but deserted. And whoever said Montevideo was the most laid back capital of South America hadn´t been to Asunción on a Sunday. However this morning things picked up, although it wouldn´t be quite fair to say there was a "rush hour", it was more of a "slightly animated ten minutes". However heading out of the city on the exhaust belching buses this afternoon was anything but sedate. That makes it sound like a terrible place, but ignore that and what other people might say, it´s a really great city, one that I feel safe and comfortable in.

A note on the safety. It is a very safe city. I have however noticed a hierachy in security: If you´re a door man on a cafe-bar you might get a shirt that says "security" on it, if you´re a security guard you have a nightstick, a knife and a pistol, if you´re in the police you have an automatic weapon of some sort and if you´re in the military you get a huge canon type thing... your safety is perhaps assured on the most part there as a tourist or richer citizen, but it unnerved me that the street kids run away when the police cars pass. The poverty is obvious here, there is a shanty town directly opposite the government buildings.

If you come here go to the post office - not an obvious tourist attraction, but go just for a look - it´s very old fashioned in a wonderfully decaying building.

In other news...
Right now I´m just trying to work out if my toes are tanned or if it´s just ground in dirt.

More about all sorts in a couple of days...