Encarnacion

The problem with having a nice hotel, especially when you generally go to bed as late as we do, is that it is hard to drag yourself out in the morning.  We did at least force ourselves up in time for breakfast on the first day, but then we went back to the room, supposedly just to get ready to go out, and we're there for another few hours.

On my birthday we didn't even get down to breakfast.   And even when we did make it out, we got side tracked by the little black kitten and the parrot that we made friends with at the hotel.  So sadly, we didn't make it to the nearby Jesuit ruins.

But we did get around the town.  Not that there was anything that much to see here, and again, everywhere closes during the day for long siestas. We did see the karumbes, the little yellow horsedrawn carts that used to be the taxis in the city, but now are just a tourist thing.  And we tried out the pizza place on the square named after them.  That was OK, but we preferred the cafe next door, where we whiled away a few hours having quiche, cake, beer and hot drinks, and we're astounded when the bill came to only £10.

While we were there there was something going on with some local schools.  Groups of kids were out stopping traffic and leafleting people.  One group was doing the traditiomal drumming to get peoples' attention, which worked quite well.  We couldn't work out what it was for, but it was interesting to watch. Like a number of the places we have been to, there seems to be a trend for younger people to just drive around the town.  Here though, they seem to do it with very loud music blaring out of their cars and pickups.  Later on we also saw one of the leafleting groups going around in two pickups.  The first was decked out with huge speakers, and they were all in the back of the second, dancing.

Judging by the quality of the cars and the buildings here, Encarnacion is a somewhat better off city than Asuncion, and although we saw some rather more ramshackle homes, we didn't see any evidence of very poor or homeless people.  Of course they may just have been kept out of sight elsewhere.

Sadly it seemed that we may have left Encarnacion a day early for the action, as we noticed as we were on the bus going out that groups seemed to be preparing for some kind of procession or something.  Oh well.