Let's say it's not been a great day so far. I woke up about 6am and then 8am and then 9:30am feeling relatively OK but still not wanting to get up. I finally dragged myself out of bed about 10:30am, which is still quite good for me, and left the hotel about 11:30.
I tried to wander down to the river. I went the same way I tried last night and a bit further on the street was sort of flooded (probably just a few mm, but it was the whole width of the street) and had what looked like engineering work beyond. I tried another route and it was similar, big 'project X, no access' signs and in the distance some trucks and diggers and things doing something. So I am assuming you cannot really get down to the river. I could see Posadas over the houses from the higher ground and I think that's as good as is possible.
It was hot as hell and my bag weighed a ton as I had the big fat guide book, my fleece and a big bottle of water in it. I went to the bus terminal to try to catch one of the 'frequent buses to Trinidad' (site of the ruins) mentioned in my guide book. It doesn't say they go from the bus terminal, but it doesn't say where they do go from. No sign of any bus not going to Asuncion or Ciudad del Este. No companies offering Trinidad as a destination and no not-specific-company information office and of course no signs at all.
The guide book says any bus going to Ciudad del Este will drop you off at the ruins. But to be frank I didn't fancy negotiating that and particularly didn't fancy the driver forgetting to stop and me ending up in Ciudad del Este. Maybe a stupid thought but I just wasn't in the mood. Not to mention I always figure if it's hard to get to some remote place from a town/city, it's going to be even harder getting back.
I pretty much decided after loitering at the terminal for 15-30 minutes I would cut my loses, waste the hotel room for tonight and just go on to Montevideo. If no one will take me to the ruins, fuck the ruins.
I went for a meal at some nearby restaurant while I mused. It was one of those places I love that feel the need to divide the menu into different meals of the day. Because I'd just hate to order a meal which is inappropriate to the current time. It would be like having bacon and eggs for lunch in England. Unthinkable and if indulged in to excess, likely to result in social collapse.
So I foolishly ordered 'noodles with chicken'. They turned up and it was not, let's say for convenience, 'Japanese' style as I'd expected. (Partly because, well, it's *noodles* and partly because there seems to be an odd preponderance of Asian food in the restaurants listed in the guide book here.) No no no. The menu didn't bother to say but it was a quarter chicken at the side of a plate of (stone cold) noodles with a tomato-based sauce liberally slopped all over.
I did briefly taste it just in case it was nice, but it wasn't. I could have forced it down without too much effort had I been hungry, desperate or socially compelled to, but as it was this just kind of confirmed my decision to get the fuck out of Encarnacion. Totally irrational but there you go. The place seems to have no nightlife, no river views despite being on a river, no transport to the only nearby attraction which makes it worth visiting and then the food sucks too. I'm sure the latter is unfair, the guide book lists various places and says the food there is excellent. Since I couldn't take it out with me last night and hence had no map I was unable to pursue any of their recommendations.
They gave me some vaguely bread-like corn (I think the guide mentions this as a local thing) which I ate while drinking the litre of coke I'd ordered. I think the waiter was a little surprised at the untouched food when I paid but he didn't say anything, and why should he, I've paid for the damn stuff, it's my food to do with as I please.
I went back to the hotel and booked up a hostel for four nights starting tomorrow night in Montevideo. I couldn't get an ensuite but no massive deal. I nearly booked at one place which actually had a single room, except that they felt the need to say "Reservations expire at 2PM!!! So please let us know if you are arriving after that.". Let me enumerate the problems there:
- I don't know how I'm getting to Montevideo so I certainly don't know when I will arrive.
- As soon as you say that, I no longer trust you to keep my reservation even if I do tell you.
- If I am PAYING for a room for that night, HOW FUCKING DARE YOU then turn round and say "oh, you didn't start using it in time, so we charged you anyway and then took money off someone else to use it too". You either take my money and give me a guarantee, or you take no money up front and I get off free if I don't turn up.
So anyway, fuck you and if that's your idea of how to run a business then I hope you won't be around much longer.
The hostel I did book at may be a bit of a party hostel (24h bar, allegedly) but by the same token may be a bit noisy. It was the one I got the best feeling about anyway.
I then checked out, telling the guy I might be back if I had problems with border control (I'm paying for the room tonight anyway), and walked over to the bus terminal to get a taxi to the border.
Let me say at this point that all the following was done in bad Spanish and may account for some misunderstandings. I think context should have made things clear, but I will bitch about that as it happens.
Me: How much to go to customs?
Him: Argentina or Paraguay?
Me: Paraguay
Him: 20 pesos.
Me: OK
<we start to walk to the car>
Me: 20 thousand guaranis, yes?
Him: 20 pesos
Me: Oh, Argentinian pesos?
Him: Yes
Me: How much in guaranis?
Him: 25,000
Me: OK
Because here I am IN PARAGUAY, clearly not having just arrived since otherwise why would I want border control (well, maybe it's like the Ciudad del Este situation, but still) and hence likely to have - gasp - Paraguayan cash, which in fact I probably want to use up as I'm leaving the country, so clearly I want a price in Argentinian pesos quoting to me.
In the cab he offers to take me all the way to the bus terminal in Posadas. I ask how much, he says 90,000, I say OK. I then sit there thinking I am probably being ripped off but also thinking fuck it, it's convenient and I want to get to Posadas for an onward bus ASAP. (All the time the fact that it's Sunday and maybe a bad day to travel is at the back of my mind.)
I then realise he has my suitcase in the boot and I'm going to have to get out of the car twice. He didn't seem particularly dodgy but man, the mental image of the car driving off with my suitcase in the back wasn't an appealing one. I resolved to take the suitcase with me every time I got out even if it hurt his feelings, or he acted like it did.
I then went on to think he might think I would do a runner, effectively getting a free trip to the Paraguayan border. In hindsight this was a stupid thought anyway, as I have observed in a different context I am nearly immobile with my suitcase.
When we got there I tried to say apologetically that I wanted to take my case with me as it was just my principle to do so, and (admittedly using present rather than conditional, which may not have helped) said that as I could in theory walk off without paying him, I would give him 50k now as a gesture of faith. He then got me the suitcase out of the boot and I said 'I hope I will be back very soon' and walked 5m behind the taxi to the control point (two women at a trestle table in the street) stamped my passport. It took about 30 seconds. I saw the car drive off as I was there but figured he was just moving up for some reason. But no, the fucker just left.
I am half inclined to think he thought I said I *was* going to walk off rather than I *could*. But then why would I pay him DOUBLE what he'd said it would be to go to the Paraguayan border? Because I'd (in this hypothetical situation) backed out on our 90k all-the-way deal? Seems a bit unlikely to me. So I think he was just a bit of a robbing bastard.
I then thought I'd try to walk across the bridge. Approaching it I pulled my camera out and joy of joys the zoom lever and shutter button had somehow got ripped off in my pocket. I tried to reattach them and they worked but were clearly not firmly held. I rammed it in my bag and will have to take a look at it the next time I am settled somewhere.
And you can't walk across the bridge. At this point I was doubly fucked off with the driver for ripping me off and leaving me stranded. I walked back to the border control bit and luckily spotted a couple of women who clearly seemed to be waiting for the bus, and I asked and they were.
The bus turned up in a couple of minutes absolutely rammed. My guide book said that bus didn't wait at either control post so I figured those fuckers would have to wait and the three of us would have that one to ourselves. But no, the bus does wait. We just managed to squeeze on anyway. Cost PGN5000.
I was right at the front and had it been convenient (which it wouldn't even had the thing not broken) it would have been nice to take some photos on the (very long) bridge. But still.
We got off at the Argentinian border post, me being first as I was in the doorway. Seldom have I experienced such a bad-mannered rush of fuckers pushing past as on the walk/run to the border control. Even when the woman in front of me was stood in the doorway with her suitcase fuckers kept squeezing past her.
Passport stamped no problem. I seemed to get selected for a customs screening. I am thinking I will lose the bus here but that's not quite the end of the world so it just adds to my sense of hacked-offness. Bags through the X-ray type machine. The guy then wants to look in my backpack. He seems fascinated by the existence of a laptop and camera. In the end he waves me out of a door at the far end. I just get the bus a minute before it goes.
I am still stood in the doorway blocking it up as we slowly make our way to the bus terminal. But we got there in the end and looking on the bright side, at least this was cheaper (PGN55,000) and only a bit slower than giving that robbing git of a driver the PGN90,000 we agreed for the whole journey.
Accosted by a tout outside the terminal who led me to a kiosk with a big queue saying there was a bus to Concordia now. He seemed to want my passport so I said I would want to compare prices first. He said they were all the same. I said I would want to confirm that for myself. He stared at me a bit unpleasantly and repeated that they were all the same. So I said if they were all the same I might as well go somewhere with no queue.
As it happened none of the nearby kiosks did services to Concordia so fearing I might miss the bus he said was going 'now' I joined the queue at the place the tout had shown me in the first place. I should put "queue" in quotes. After some fucking family of three spent ages buying tickets, they just stood right in front of the ticket window discussing something among themselves. While I fumed, some woman came out of nowhere and pushed past to ask a question at the window. After her another woman did the same. These arrogant fuckers have no concept of queueing.
So I wheeled my battering ram, sorry, suitcase, around the dimwitte family who were still stood there and got unarguably in a 'queue' behind the second woman. She didn't seem to like being blocked in when she turned to leave, but I didn't much like her pushing in.
There was a bus going in 15 minutes so I got the ticket and as I said am now on it. I believe it's a five hour journey, so I will be in Concordia around 10pm. I am not sure how easy it will be to cross the border, though it is open 24h. I just may be able to get a bus from Concordia-Montevideo but I expect I need to hop across the border to Salto and go on from there. One way or another I am hoping I can be on a bus to Montevideo around midnight, I believe that would get me there about 6-7am which is not too bad, better than arriving at 3am and probably preferable to finding accommodation in Concordia or Salto at 10pm-midnight.
I'm not sure about Paraguay any more. I'm sure a lot of my problems were at least partly my fault, but while Asuncion was pretty cool (and I don't think it was just the people I met), Encarnacion as described above just seems to make everything unnecessarily difficult.
Anyway, at least this bus is heavily airconditioned and I will try to relax a bit on the way to Concordia.
I do wonder if I gave up too easily on going to the ruins (I could have tried asking someone on the offchance) but I just didn't feel like it. It wasn't obviously even a fit of pique. Sod it, it's not as if they were even on the itinerary four days ago, so how much can I possibly regret missing them? If (and it is a little bit of an if rather than a when the way I feel now) I come back I can maybe try again. If I wasn't on a tightish schedule then the inconvenience of getting 'stuck' or 'lost' at the ruins would be less. And I must admit that rightly or wrongly I always felt they were too much of a nuisance to get to, I wasn't desperately looking forward to seeing them anyway. Maybe this is just sour grapes but I don't think so.
I do get the impression from the guide book there's loads of cool stuff in Paraguay I haven't seen or done. But I always do, partly because sadly I don't seem to be the sort of person to go trekking in rainforests or sailing down rivers on extremely dodgy sounding boats. But it was also always going to be something of a flying visit anyway, I wouldn't have had time for all that other kind of stuff anyway. I was in the country four days and the maximum I could have stayed was five (which I would have done had I not bailed out early today).
As I say, maybe another time when I'm not so rushed and I perhaps plan from the outset to spend more time in the country.
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