Fri 16:10. Just came to wait outside hotel, ten mins late but they sort of implied they might be 30 mins late. Bit nervous but sure it'll be cool. If it sucks somehow it's only a few hours so no big deal.
Got up at 3pm sadly, I did wake up at 2ish as planned but could not drag myself out of bed. Not eaten except a few biscuits but I suspect we will get food at some point. Not booked a hostel for Encarnacion yet, I did check briefly but my username/password for the hotel's custom internet stuff (it's like the place in Rio) has expired, even though the ticket says it should be valid til 17:46 today (and why should it expire at all? It's free. Maybe it didn't used to be, the ticket says it's USD5). I will try to be up in time to pop into the hotel business centre at 9am or so before I check out to use the internet there, or if I am back early enough I may ask reception for a new username/password. If push comes to shove I can just get something when I arrive in Encarnacion, it shouldn't be that late in the day.
16:20. Still waiting. Half hoping they won't turn up, half worried I might have missed an e-mail (the only means of contact they have) changing plans as I couldn't check it due to lack of net access. I will play it by ear but I will probably loiter outside the hotel til about 5pm then maybe go in and check my mail and then just pass a quiet night on my own if nothing's doing. Maybe I would drop into the Brittania on the offchance or maybe I would studiously avoid it. We will just have to see how things come out.
I can't get a GPRS connection here so I can't check mail on my phone nor can I send all these blog posts I am bashing out on here. Sadly there is no convenient way to get them onto the laptop to post using its net connection, so they will just have to pile up on here until I can send them.
Just found this in Real Life in London, I must use it at some point when e-mailing a friend:
"I shall not now detain your attention by an account of our proceedings or adventures on the road: we shall have many more convenient opportunities of indulging in such details when we meet, replete as I can assure you they are with interest."
16:35. Still waiting. As before, half hoping they just aren't coming. They did say they would ask at reception for me so I may give it ten more minutes then go to reception and get my access card and a new wifi code, go to my room and book a hostel and check my e-mail. Then if nothing turns up by then I can wander off for a bite to eat with a clear conscience.
19:25. Hung around in the hotel room surfing (more out of a certain laziness than because I was waiting) until I came out about ten minutes ago to La Taberna restaurant. Amazingly enough they will do paella for one person here. No e-mail from the guys fron last night but the damn forwarding is either broken or slow as a test mail to myself hasn't got through or bounced yet. I do have Javier's e-mail address but I didn't see much point emailing him this near the time. I may well go down to Britannia after this anyway and if I do bump into them cool, if not no big deal.
Was feeling a bit bad I haven't seen more of the city earlier but I tried the first day, even if my walk probably didn't tend in the best direction possible, and I think last night was worth it in terms of it 'wasting' today. I could have had a quick wander from 5pm ish but I was too lazy and it was only about an hour before sunset.
Neither expedia nor hostelworld has anything listed in Encarnacion. I will just have to turn up and see, the guide book shows at least one hotel near the bus terminal for a start.
19:50. Just finished eating, pretty good and feel a bit stuffed. Almost annoyed at feeling compelled to go to the Brittania, although apart from some place opposite mentioned on wikitravel I don't really have anywhere else particularly in mind. I don't know if I want to bump into anyone I know or not. I am half hoping to just sit quietly and have a beer or two on my own without meeting anyone.
20:20. Just got here. Not seen anyone I recognise though have deliberately not hunted round thoroughly. I think I like it like this. Am at a table a bit in the middle of the courtyard and feel a bit conspicuous for some reason. I guess I just don't like exposing my back. :-)
Yeah, I feel a bit uneasy and, probably correctly but it shouldn't matter, that maybe I was a bit of an idiot last night. Oh well. Just have to try to surf over these doubts instead of drowning in them.
Oh, from prominent signs around the bar, it seems the drinking age here is 20.
21:00. Halfway through the second (350ml?) chopp. Feeling jittery and a few minutes ago I had a sudden surge of almost-but-not-quite panic. I have no idea why. I feel perfectly physically safe here and everything is going OK, for all that I'd prefer to be able to pre-book a hostel for tomorrow it really is no big deal. I don't have much water back at the hotel but if, as I suspect, it isn't convenient to buy a bottle when I leave here I will just have to swallow my pride and take some from the minibar. It's negligible really.
I think I may just have a couple more and leave, it would probably be prudent to have a quiet and early one anyway (if I don't surf the night away).
21:15. Just got another beer. Have moved tables and feel slightly less conspicuous. It doesn't help that all the free tables are low ones with stupid little stools instead of proper chairs. I think this is encouraging an awkward hunched posture which probably doesn't assist relaxing.
I somehow really miss my GPRS connection. I like being able to emit random e-mails to people when I get to feeling like this.
Except for the hotel (which is moderately nice, I must admit), it is fairly cheap here. The meal earlier was PGN40,000 including a fairly substantial PGN5,000 (I am making up my own currency code as I can't remember what it really is!) tip, which is well under six quid.
This quote from Real Life in London shows some things don't really change:
"Both by day and night in the most frequented streets of the Metropolis and its environs, the unoffending passengers of either sex are frequently obstructed on, or absolutely pushed off the pavement by a trio of arm-in-arm puppies; nay they will sometimes sweep the whole of the space from the wall to the curb stone, by walking four abreast, a practice brutally infringing the laws of civil society in pedestrian excursions through a crowded Metropolis."
Some things, perhaps sadly, have changed:
"I have however with pleasure, upon some occasions, seen these vile trespassers meet with a just resentment in the unexpected pugilistic exertions of the insulted party; and have almost rejoiced to see them packed into a coach and sent home with bruises, black eyes, and bloody noses, serving, it is to be hoped, as wholesome lessons for their future conduct."
Oh, if I didn't already note it, my hotel room is on the 14th floor. The view is not quite as impressive as I'd expect, but it's not bad. I popped up to the 15th earlier having seen a sign indicating the existence of a roof garden. I couldn't find it but did get a view in the opposite direction over the river, which was moderately cool.
Pretty busy here now, I half fear I will lose my table when I get my next beer but I'm sure I can squeeze in somewhere.
22:00. Did indeed lose my table but the bar in the patio is vacant so I have perched myself here. If it happens to lead to conversation so be it but I am really not seeking it tonight.
Feeling a lot less jittery now. Maybe I was worried I would meet someone from last night and have now decided I won't, but I don't know. (Also, logically, since I met them all late-ish the fact I haven't seen them yet tonight proves nothing. But I just aren't that bothered either way now, I think.)
It is a somewhat pointless observation but I was told that the population of Paraguay is 5 million (by the kiosk owner at Ciudad del Este bus terminal) or 7 million (by the group I met yesterday). So either way, there are less people in the entire country than there are in London. Yet oddly I find it easier to meet people here in this city of approximately 1.5 million. :-) (That figure is from vague recollections of the guide book, no one here told me.)
(I know one could make similar observations about, say, Scotland or Denmark. But on the other hand, they are physically fairly small, and Paraguay while smallish by the standards of the continent is relatively enormous.)
I do seem to recall being astonished by three Australian guys telling me the population of Australia when I met them at Oliver's Travels in La Paz. I cannot remember the figure, but I was astounded how low it was. (And yes, I know the centre of Australia is largely uninhabited, but as places like London show, you could pack a lot of population into the inhabited bits round the edge in principle.)
Oh, among the British decorations on the walls are a number of posters showing a photgraph of a woman dressed up as Britannia. Closer inspection reveals these are actually adverts for the Britannia Building Society. :-)
22:45. Feeling perfectly OK now. Still at the terrace bar, have switched to bottled beer (served in a polystrene container for insulation) to avoid the need to go to the inner bar and give up my seat here. There is a chap sat two seats to my right who is clearly on his own, I think I could speak to him but frankly I'm not really in the mood, and it's noisy enough (mostly the crowd, the music is a bit drowned by them) that I think conversation would be a bit of a strain even if we were both native speakers of the same language. If he makes a conversational sally all well and good, but I'm not going to invite it. (I actually feel it would be no 'effort' to throw out a few sentences, having a good impression of the sociability of the bar and the people here. So I really am choosing not to act solely because I'm not in the mood, as opposed to talking myself out of it because it would feel awkward.)
Crash Test Dummies' "Mmmm x4" playing now. Ruben told me last night he was responsible for a lot of the music here. Whether that is true or not I will never know. (He could actually sing pretty well FWIW. And if I didn't note it at the time - and I think I did - there was a guy who turned out to be from Buenos Aires who did some Whitney Houston songs, also Nilsson's "Without You", astoundingly well.)
While I may not have seen that much and may be unduly influenced by yesterday, I must say Asuncion gets the thumbs up and I do hope to return here on a subsequent trip. I hope writing that won't lead to me getting mugged on the way home tonight.
23:10. "There is a light that never goes out" playing. I hope this marks the start of a Smiths/Morrissey binge. :-)
Sadly not. Daniel just appeared and asked if he could take the stool next to me. Vaguely cool to meet someone I know even briefly, I must admit.
On that subject, though I am vaguely ashamed to say it, chatting with those three guys in 70% Spanish, 30% English last night felt very cosmopolitan. In some ways almost better than a 100% Spanish conversation. Yeah, so I'm a secret pseud. :-)
I have observed before that when I end up with the 'symbol shift' accidentally on on the phone random innocuous English looks like swear words in a comic. '@:1 3$@-j @3'- ,1?3&' $,, ,&(#1 @3 4"1-?'3 '"": &- ,)8$ '@:1 -+1&2 +"24- &- @ 3$")6$3
23:45 Just ordered another bottle. I observe in passing they actually use coins here for smaller amounts (my limited experience suggests 2000 is the smallest note, coins go down to at least 500). Argentina has coins but they are fairly rare, at one point I somehow acquired a lot but they dwindled away and on departure I had only some stupid fiddly little bits of crap worth approximately nothing which I got in change at the hostel in Puerto Iguazu because the bill came to some stupid £5.99 style amount. For all that, the coins are not worth much even at local prices, it's not like the UK where you might reasonably pay for something substantial like a beer or a loaf of bread with one or two coins. I do almost wonder why we bother when presumably notes would be cheaper. Maybe we go to all that expense just for the sake of vending machine operators. On the other hand, I (just, I think I was pretty young) remember the pound note being phased out for the coin, so although the vending machi
ne hypothesis might justify that, it does almost suggest notes aren't as cheap as they might appear. A genuinely interesting question which it would be nice to find out the facts about.
I will also observe I have encountered more dilapidated and/or sellotaped notes here than I ever have before. No one blinks when taking them, so it's cool, but still a bit odd.
I can't help feeling that, though it doubtless sucks in summer, the climate here right now seems very much to my taste. Warm but not excessively so during the day and pleasantly warm at night (I am sat right under a ceiling fan here in shirt sleeves and the breeze is pleasant rather than cold). I am sure I have been in other places where I felt this - Santiago in February probably qualifies, for a start - but it seems to have been a while since I've been somewhere I wasn't cold at night or dying of heat exhaustion during the day.
Hardly surprising but the mats on the bar are emblazoned with Union Jack (yeah, I should say Union Flag but I am trying to cut down on my pedantry).
00:45. There is, and has been for the last hour or so, some slightly tired/bored/drunk woman who clearly knows the barmaid sat to my right, replacing the chap from earlier. With the purest intentions in the world I can't help thinking she might welcome a chat, but I really can't be bothered. I must admit to a certain shyness but I think the driving emotion is that I am just not in the mood. If she particularly wanted to talk to me she could, she must have heard me order a couple of beers and realised I'm a harmless and exotic foreigner (and if not, her mate could have told her). I do half feel an inclination to say something but it honestly just seems too much effort. "Stairway to Heaven" just starting to play!
02:30. I feel sober but I shouldn't be here. Am going to have a last beer regardless. I did talk to that woman and perhaps not totally surprisingly but it seems surprising to me, she (Daisy BTW) is the sister of Daniel's girlfriend (Deborah, more or less) who I met last night. Small world/bar. There was a bit of 'si, si' about it but I did understand most of our chat. She has given me the name of a hotel in Encarnacion and some advice on how to get to Montevideo from there.
03:30 (or not, given the later entry was undoubtedly at 03:20 I can only speculate on the cause of this error, as if it mattered - it was probably about 03:00). About to leave. Hope the crap alarm on my phone wakes me in time, I can sleep on the bus but getting up worries me. Still, as I've said before I usually get up when I have to, though I usually have a decent alarm.
Chatted a bit with the barmaid after Daisy left, she had been a bit involved in my chat with Daisy. She is a first or second year medical student studying to be a neurosurgeon working to support her studies. I am humbled after fattening on a government grant with (admittedly modest) parental support to get a pathetic BSc in maths. ;-) She says doctors don't get that much respect and are not paid that well, I gather a lot fuck off after they graduate. If I understood correctly she said there were only three (qualified) neurosurgeons in the country. Mind you, it's a pretty specialised area, I wonder how many there are in London. I would guess it's in the hundreds but wouldn't be totally shocked if it turned out to be in the tens. Actually the more I think about it, I'd put money on the number of neurosurgeons in London being in the tens not the hundreds. Hmm, I'm now mentally flip-flopping. Another minor trivia point it would be cool to resolve.
03:20. Just got back to the hotel. Feel fairly sober though I know I'm not entirely. No worries as long as I get up OK. Must admit to a certain ripe satisfaction at getting in the cab back home and feeling comfortable at speaking the language enough to not have to worry. Pathetic but I'll take whatever chances I have to feel smug. :-)
To bed, if not for the regulation eight hours...
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