The Gran Chaco

Hello everybody!

Sorry, I know that the last blog was only in Italian, I meant to translate it but I forgot all about it, and internet cafes have been rather thin on the ground lately...
Ciao!!! qui solo Ross dice che gli dispiace di non aver tradotto l ultimo blog che pero non c erano molti internet cafe in giro e poi riassume brevemente che abbiamo fatto a s Cruz de la Sierra, che tra l altro non e`nella sierra ma nella giungla.
To fill you in, Adele wrote about our time in Santa Cruz on our last blog.

We left Sucre, where we'd spent christmas, for Santa Cruz on a night bus. Even though Santa Cruz is the largest city in Bolivia, part of the road that links the two isn't even a road at all- it just follows a dried out river bed. The city is nearly in the Amazon, and the weather while we were there alternated between torrential rain and muggy heat, and there isn't a great deal to see there (although there were a lot of outdoor barbeques where they cook up monster-sized fish from the tropical rivers- sometimes with dynamite, apparently...!)

The following day we made the two hour journey up to Samaipata, a small village full of ex-pat travellers selling baggy trousers and home-made earrings, and while we were there we went for a short day-trek with a local guide in the forest. He was a good guide, and he led us along some very muddy tracks through the vegetation, where we saw a snake (albeit a small one), some huge, lumbering beetles and a lot of giant ferns, which are as big as trees but much more pre-historic looking. On our return to Samaipata, we found that by pure coincidence our friend from Machu Picchu, Muriel, was staying in our hostel, and the next day we all returned to Santa Cruz together to celebrate New Year. We did so by going to an Argentine restaurant, spending what was a fortune compared to our normal budget but which was in fact about 10 pounds each, and all I can say is I can't wait to get to Buenos Aires- it was amazing! We also went to the centre of the city where fireworks were being let off all over the place in a manner that would give a fit to an English health-and-safety inspector, and where we felt conspicuously out of place next to the locals.

On the 1st, predictably, the city was dead and we didn't do much, but on the 2nd Adele and I bid farewell to Muriel and boarded a bus for Paraguay. The chapter on this country in our guide is very brief due to the fact that few people visit it- in the four days we've been here, we haven't seen a single fellow tourist. That may partly be to do with the fact that crossing between Bolivia and Paraguay is not exactly easy- you need to cross 'the Chaco', and area that takes up the whole western half of Paraguay but has less than 5% of the population living in it. It's often described as a 'desert', which is odd when you first see it because it is in fact full of trees. However, the soil is so salty and sandy that only a few species grow here, all of them covered with huge thorns, the water that falls collects in useless, salty pools, and the heat is unbelievable- we have seen it hit 42 degrees centigrade! (108 degrees F). If you have a look on google maps, you'll see a road and not much else (in an area about the size of the UK).
Il 1 di gennaio abbiamo faticato anche atrovare un posto dove mangiare, maq il 2do io e Ross siamo pariti alla volta del Paraguay Il capitolo sul Paraguay nella nostra guida e`brevissimo quasi inesistente, in 4 giorni qui non abbiamo visto neanche un altro turista. Passare dalla Bolivia al Paraguay non e`stato esattamente facile , attraverso il Chaco, che e`grande piu della meta del Paraguay ma dove vive meno del 5% della popolazione , che e`un po un deserto ma non proprio infatti e`pieno di arbusti con spine enormi e di alberi a forma di botte pero il suolo e`salato , ci sono pozzanghere di acqua cosi salata che e`piena di pesci morti e ci sono lucertole giganti, quasi piu simili a un coccodrillo. Fa caldo, 40 gradicostanti e il sole mi asciuga i capelli in 6 secondi.
Unsurprisingly, most people try to cross the entire region without stopping, but we wanted to stop over in one of the few settlements, called Filadelfia. This town is a fairly surreal experience, not least because it's full of big, ruddy farmers and very blonde children speaking German- even a lot of the signs are in German. In the 1930s a German religious group, the Mennonites, started a colony here, and they are still here, farming and speaking German and having very little to do with the rest of the country. They also made a success of it- the (dusty) roads are full of 4x4s, the shops are full of ice cream and salami and cheese, as the guide says, it's like a suburb of a German town plonked in the middle of a baking wilderness. Very odd.
Al contrario di tutti gli altri che fanno un dritto dalla Bolivia fino a d Asuncion, noi siamo stati gli UNICI a scendere dal bus a meta pomeriggio in mezzo al deserto, per visitare lecolonie tedesche mennonite del Chaco centrale. Il bus ci ha lasciato a 15 km dalla forma di vita piu vicina a bordo pista coperti di polvere e abbiamo fatto autostop per almeno un ora senza che nessun disgraziato tedesco con pick up ci lasciasse buttarci nel suo cassone!!!!alla fine dei paragfuayani con un camion pieno di casse di sigarette ci ha messo nel bagagliaio, probabilmente di contrabbandieri, e siamo arrivato a Filadelfia, dove abbiamo girato ancora oberati dagli zaini cotto il sole cocente cercando l unico albergo. Incredibilemente, questa regione e`piena di grossi padri di famiglia biondi e rossi in faccia, con bambinelli quasi albini e i negozi son pieni di formaggio, gelati e burro. Questo perche quello che si coltiva qui sono le mucche.
The next day we went to a nearby colony, called Loma Plata, where we made the mistake of looking for a hotel with our backpacks on (it was like trekking through the Sahara) and where we went to visit 'Laguna Capitan', which was very hot, very salty, and surrounded by dead trees- another place that looked something like a painting by Salvador Dali. Inside one of the trees there was some kind of beast making a loud tapping noise, which I suppose must have been some kind of gigantic grub. We tried to think of some other Chaco-activities, but the museum was manned by a single man with a rifle who informed us that it was shut, would be shut the following day and would be shut for the rest of time for all he knew, and did not seem inclined to help us find out if or when it would open, and the owners of our hostel couldn't help us a great deal because they hardly spoke Spanish and Adele's German has gotten fairly rusty (not to mention mine...). So we got on another bus to Concepcion, where we are now.
Il giorno dopo , sconfitti dall assenza di vita in Filadelfia, siamo andati alla prossima colonia che si chiamava Loma Plata dove abbiamo macinato altri km sotto il sole del mezzogiorno con zaini annessi cercando l altro unico hotel e poi abbiamo mangiato mobntegne di gelato e anche fatto un giro in macchian nel deserto fino a un lago che secondo Ross erainfestato dai coccodrilli e dove in un albero secco abitava una bestia che faceva un suono molto inquitante...tap tap...Abbiamo cercato anche di visitare il museo della colonia Menno, ma era protetto da un uomo con un fucile che non ci ha fatti entrare e che non sapeva quando saremmo potuti tornare. Ross dice molto dottamente che il paesaggio era come un pittura di dali. L ha copiato dalla guida eh non sono parole sue ! Volevamo fare altre cose ma non c era niente, solo un taxi in tutta la citta, no ufficio del turismo, niente di niente e i due vecchiardi padroni del nostro hotel praticamente non parlavano spagnolo ne il mio tedesco si e`molto ma molto arrugginito. Quindi siamo fuggiti verso Concepcion, che e`una tranquilla cittadina sul Rio Paraguay , da dove speriamo di partire per un avventura fluviale martedi. Qui e`bellissimo. Tramonto sul fiume con colori stupendi, fiume tipicamente amazzonico, ventilatori giganti, carretti trainati da cavalli per strada. Ci piace molto a parte che e`un po difficile dormire per il calore. Abbiamo una ministanza in una catapecchia proprio sul rio e ieri sera tutta la citta stava facendo il bagno. E anche siamo abbastaza sani, probabilmente i nostri parassiti sono morti di calore.

It's also very, very hot here (the big thermometer in the centre of town read 40 degrees when we arrived at 7pm, but it may just have been broken.... by the heat), but at least it's a bit bigger and surrounded by forest rather than the Chaco. Our hotel overlooks the massive Rio Paraguay, which is full of battered-looking old boats moored at the river-port. We are hoping to get on one and journey upriver to Puerto Vallemy, on the border with Brazil, and we have been told that one might be leaving on Tuesday. Time will tell! We are both well, we seem to have defeated the various parasites!

Love to you all, more soon (although I can't say exactly when!)
Baci a tutti e a presto! al prossimo internet!!! xxxxxx
Ross (and Adele)