Partying in Paraguay - CARNAVAL!!!

After visiting the majestic Iguassu falls we headed on our way over the border to Paraguay. We had heard that Carnaval was quite a big event in a little town called Encarnacion in the very south of Paraguay. On the bus journey over we only saw a few tourists, two Geordies & a Swede!! We got talking to them for the length of the journey and decided to travel together over the next few days as our game plans were quite the same. Nils the Swede had great Spanish as he had been living in Buenos Aires so that was a big help as very few locals had any English and their accents were hard to understand!! We got to the town on the Friday afternoon and bought our tickets for the 2 nights of
Carnival with the assistance of a very friendly taxi driver :o) We spent the day just dandering around the town and then headed back to the hotel to get ready!! I had a shower (which blew up while I was in it!!) and we put on our glad rags!! The atmosphere inside the Sambadrome was mad, people dancing and singing on the stages either side of the parade and lots of fantastic floats all in themes like Moulin Rouge, Las Vegas, random Mexican comedy shows!!! The bright colours and costumes were amazing and the crowd were spraying snow spray everywhere. Our going out gear was ruined within 5mins (lesson learned for Saturday night it was back to shorts and t-shirts and no showers necessary!!). Nobody escaped so we had to get involved, Michaela was definitely enjoying the battle, cans and cans of snow spray were being purchased and the cans of beer weren’t far behind either. Tom and the lads were obviously loving the Samba Goddesses. Even Mrs Argentina made an appearance and the lads voted and decided that she definitely deserved her title!! The Brama girls were also a big hit (the boys mouths were trailing on the stand!!) and there were a few hunky Brama men thrown in too (but one nice naked man for about every 100 women!!)

Paraguay is definitely the poorest country we have seen in South America, lots of very young kids sleeping on the footpaths which was so sad to see. Bolivia was also very poor but it seemed like everyone at least had some kind of house to sleep in but the kids here were sleeping in make shift shelters at the side of the road. In Bolivia it seemed that everyone was able to make a living selling something and the environment felt enterprising whereas in Paraguay I guess there is not so many tourists to sell things to and so the atmosphere felt quite hopeless. We hadn’t really experienced begging anywhere else in South America, trying to sell you things - yes, but just begging for food - not alot. Bit by bit more tourists are making it to Paraguay so hopefully things will improve and 80% of the countries electricity is produced by their hydro-dam so this in itself is a good starting point for development, you would think, but I guess people first have to have enough money to afford a permanent home in order to benefit.