El Roble

Day 28 – Another trap sprung

We were awoken early by the room phone in the morning. I don’t really enjoy speaking on the phone in English, let alone in Spanish and I would say that having to do it half asleep is one of my absolute least favourite things. I thought the receptionist was telling me that our buggy driver had returned to take us to the bus station, something he had offered but we had politely declined given it was only a few blocks. When I went downstairs to sort things out, it turned out that she was actually telling me that we needn’t go to the bus station as Peter (of El Roble) had called to say he was in town running errands and would come collect us in an hour.

Peter is a wiry, well tanned guy in his forties, he speaks good English spattered with amusing eccentricities and smokes an endless succession of small local cigars. As soon as we got in his van he started regaling us with fascinating and amusing stories. His repertoire seemed bottomless and when we finally parted four days later he was still going strong! Rather than trying to slot each story into our own story in the correct chronological order I’ll give a brief cross section here.

Various aid agencies operate in the vicinity of Concepcion, some of these seem to frustrate Peter immensely. As an example of some of the ludicrous actions carried out he told us of a German agency that is compelled to comply with German as well as local law. Obviously this is intended to ensure that the agency conforms to environmental and social best practice. This agency was building a bridge, but the locals had become confused about why all the beams had to be so massive. When questioned, it was revealed that the bridge also needed to comply with the German building code, which included the necessity to withstand two metres of snow!

After pointing out some owls nesting on the ground in a field just outside the farm, Peter told us of how owls needn’t fear predation by other animals as they are all far too afraid to approach the owls’ nest. It seems that the owls cohabitate with a poisonous snake. Unable to dig for themselves the snakes take advantage of the holes the owls dig, in return the owls (including their eggs!)receive the protection of the snake.

After taking his three kids to school of a morning, Peter likes to engage in an activity he calls ‘Backpacker Hunting’. As previously mentioned there is no Lonely Planet (or Rough Guide) to Paraguay, and the section in the South America guide could be described as brief at best, El Roble is not mentioned. What the guide does mention is the possibility of catching a river boat in Concepcion north into the jungle toward Brazil, however the information provided is hopelessly out of date and still changing. As a result many backpackers arrive in Concepcion (6 hours or more from the nearest place of much consequence) only to find that hitching a ride up the river isn’t as easy as they thought. So Peter waits in his ‘Backpacker Hunting Place’ for these delayed / lost individuals to pass by. He introduces himself, dispenses current information about river voyages and in passing explains that he runs El Roble and leaves them with a brochure. He estimates that 80-90% of people end up coming to stay with him for a period of time (one such person ended up staying eight months!).

The perilously overloaded Aquidaban preparing to depart upstream

One day Peter was surprised to encounter two English backpackers with their two young children. They didn’t need information about the boat because they had come the other direction, this is apparently quite unusual. What was more unusual was that they had not come from Northern Paraguay or Brazil, but all the way from Bolivia. There are no boats that ply this route, passenger services or otherwise, they had bribed a Bolivian Military boat to take them hundreds of kilometres into Paraguay / Brazil (the river forms the border at this point), had they been discovered they could have started a war!

Anyway, having finished running errands with Peter we bounced up the poorly maintained gravel road towards Belen, in the outskirts of which El Roble is located. El Roble (literally The Oak, link here) is about 30ha of paradise amongst the otherwise mistreated Paraguayan countryside. Peter and Andresa’s (Andresa is Peter’s wife) primary form of agriculture is fish farming. They have a series of large ponds in which Peter grows a variety of mostly native fish species. At least one of these species has to be trained to feed in captivity, making for what sounds like quite a challenging process (apparently a Brazilian company owns the patent for the training method). Also spread across the property is a variety of other forestry and agricultural pursuits.

Peter and Elmer feeding the fish

Sunset over the big pond

After arriving and taking the shopping into the kitchen area, passing through the family’s living space complete with tortoise and various other skin wall hangings and paintings demonstrating traditional Paraguayan lifestyle, we were introduced to Andresa, their three children (Nestor, Hannibal and Ameli) and Andresa’s niece Judith. Next was the tortoises, the guinea pig looking rodent, the howler monkey Dodo, Dodo’s roomies (two lovebirds) and finally Nina the dog. Then we were given our choice of shady spots amongst the trees to camp (they also have four cabins of various sizes).

Our camp spot

Dodo has a fascination with belly buttons, here he is inspecting Nestor’s (his favourite one!)

Shortly before lunch Nestor introduced us to Mimi the capybara! Peter told us how one of the neighbouring campesinos had brought Mimi to him (asking for money) when she still fit in the palm of his hand. Normally he turns them away (or he’d have a zoo) but on this occasion he could not resist. Recently, now that Mimi is fully grown, it’s become apparent that Mimi is in fact a male capybara and keen of finding himself a lady capybara. As there are none in the vicinity Mimi decided to try it on with one of the pigs. Unfortunately for Mimi the pig was three times his size and not flattered by his advances.

Mimi positioned to catch any dinner scraps (note the wound on his back).

Next came lunch. For the duration of our stay Andresa cooked us three delicious meals a day. Generally the vast proportion of ingredients were sourced from El Roble, including of course a variety of delicious fresh fish. Meals included such things as Paraguayan soup with corn gnocchi, homemade hamburgers with homemade mustard and fresh garden salad or whole fresh fish.

That afternoon we met Elmer, a Philippino-American Peacecorp volunteer, who had been working on a few different projects nearby and like the succession of other volunteers over the years, had heard that Peter’s was a cool place to hang during time off. Unfortunately, due to some minor political unrest in another area he had been reassigned. Today was his last day in Belen and he convinced Peter to let him cook a huge fish Philippino style, stuffed, seasoned and wrapped in banana leaves on the BBQ. When it was ready, he lay Banana leaves across the table and served the fish with rice, soy sauce and a chilli salsa. He then showed everyone how to eat his delicious meal with their hands and off everyone went. The kids seemed to especially enjoy digging in without cutlery to hinder them. Andresa was fond of the idea of using banana leaves as a table cloth, at the end of the meal the whole thing could be bundled up and fed to the pigs!

Dinner laid out on banana leaves

After dinner Peter had a special treat. He had decided to demolish an old shelter which stood decaying between two of the ponds. During the day he had evicted the birds living in it, and now it was time to burn it. Complete with a homemade Antorcha Olympica and lighting ceremony, I’m not sure whether he or the kids enjoyed the process more!

Some light after dinner entertainment

Further entertainment courtesy of a Paraguayan guest, provided in Spanish, Guarani and English!

Day 29 – Happily ensnared

During our second day at El Roble we were largely left to our own devices, except of course for the three beautiful meals prepared by Andresa which appeared in ‘the Mexican’ throughout the day. Peter has a small but interesting collection of books about Paraguay, including two copies of a historical fiction called ‘News From Paraguay’ about the War of the Triple Alliance, which Erin and I spent the day reading in tandem.

Dodo helping Erin read (in between belly button inspections!)

Other than reading and eating, the day was spent cooling off in the small aquifer-fed pool adjoining one of the dams and inspecting / chasing various wildlife that wandered through the grove. Several small snakes caused significant excitement, the first of which tried to share the pool with the kids, the second of which gave the guys re-roofing one of the cabins quite a fright.

Erin cooling off in the pool.

Throwing the dodgy cigars at the toads.

This huge iguana just wander straight past Erin and I as we were reading

I stalked this pair of hummingbirds mercilessly, but never managed to get a picture of one of them flying, they just move too quick. I also followed a pair of red-headed birds around, but they never let me get close enough to get a good photo.

The snake apprehended in the swimming pool.

Day 30 – Visiting the dentist

We got a lot more reading done, including a book called ‘No Lasting Home’ about the Brotherhood (a Christian group) and their move to Paraguay during the Second World War.

During the morning Peter took us for a trip around the neighbouring village of Belen. The trip included a visit to pick up some borrowed chairs and a well cover as a Christmas present to Andresa (who was paranoid that one of the kids would fall in the well, despite having a 4 year old who swims unsupervised in the dam, a howler monkey as their best friend and a wild capybara that sometimes sleeps in their bed!) We wandered around the cemetery, complete with local legends told by Peter and examples of an interesting practice of reusing the older grave stones and were taken to Peter’s favourite tourist attraction: a visit to the dentist!

Ox parked in the street

One of the streets in Belen, the trees on the left are mango trees, apparently come January thousands of tonnes of mangoes rot in the street! (Peter is presently trying to work out a way to take advantage of this including experimenting with making alcohol and fuel!)

The local dentist, he makes his own dentures etc.

Some of his handiwork

Pretty pleased we didn’t need anything doing!

He was also keen to show off his horse!

Day 31 – Tubing

For a few days we had been hoping to participate in one of Peter’s famous tubing trips (floating down the nearby river in inner tubes), but the trip was too expensive to conduct on our own. To our advantage, four Menonites showed up from the Chaco to fish in Peter’s ponds and two of them were also keen. So in the morning we loaded up the truck and drove up the river.

Loaded up and ready to go

With the boat and tubes in the water we set off downstream, being taken by the current which was quite quick due to the recent rains. Peter occasionally steered the boat by jumping into a tube attached to the bow and paddling for a minute, but mostly we just floated downstream drinking beer, fishing and chatting. Both of the Menonites had lived in Winnipeg for the last few years so they spoke decent English. At lunchtime we dragged everything ashore and Peter cooked us lunch over an open fire while the mosquitoes lunched on us.

Peter ‘steering’

Erin floating downriver

After lunch there were some brief rapids to keep things interesting, then we made a stop at a tree which overhangs the river so that I could do some monkeying around!

In all we only travelled 7km as the crow flies, but as the river meanders we covered more like 30km. Quite a relaxing way to spend a day!

Day 32 – All good things must come to and end

And this good thing came to an end in a big way. Peter dropped us at the bus station in Concepcion and we said our farewells. Our bus trip back to Asuncion was supposed to take between five and six hours. After experiencing the beautiful fleet of buses maintained by Argentine and Uruguayan companies this ride came as a bit of a shock. Because the bus was so crowded we could not sit with one another, Erin instead had the pleasure of sitting next to a large sleeping bloke with no respect for personal space. She was in the back seat (opposite the stinky dunny) and as the bus became more crowded so did the area at the back of the bus, complete with a group of teenage guys, intent on annoying her for the entire trip.

About an hour in the airconditioning broke down and it was clear from the frequent stops to inspect the engine compartment that other significant components were not working too well either. There is no shade in the Chaco and when the bus stopped for these repairs, the breeze stopped flowing through and the bus turned into a sauna (it was high 30s outside). The bus finally broke down for good a couple of kilometres from the depot in Asuncion, the trip took more than 9 hours. I suppose we had better get accustomed to such trips for when we reach Bolivia etc!