The Curious Charm of Paraguay

"Air Paraguay" used to be the cheapest way to get to the Southern Cone countries.

In the 1980s, when I was often on a student budget, the cheapest way to get to and from southernmost South America was with Líneas Aéreas Paraguayas, the now-defunct “Air Paraguay” that required a stopover in Asunción before continuing to Buenos Aires, Brazil or Chile (photograph Creative Commons). At that time, it was still the Paraguay of the notorious dictator Alfredo Stroessner, whose conspicuous portrait hung in the waiting rooms at what is now Aeropuerto Internacional Silvino Pettirossi (at that time, it bore the dictator's name). I was always tempted to take a photograph and, though a certain menace pervaded the atmosphere at that time, I once managed a blurry shot in dim light, surreptitiously.

A portrait of the late General Stroessner in the airport that then bore his name.

In succeeding years, after Stroessner’s overthrow, I spent quite a bit of time in the country in the course of researching and writing an earlier guidebook to Argentina, Uruguay & Paraguay, for a publisher best left unidentified. The country had no world-class attractions – by 1982, the Itaipú hydroelectric dam on the Brazilian border had obliterated the Guaíra falls, which reportedly were no less impressive than Iguazú – but I still found sights to interest me, such as the former Jesuit missions of Trinidad and Jesús (photograph public domain), across the Río Paraná from the Argentine city of Posadas.

Some of Paraguay's colonial Jesuit ruins are remarkably well-preserved or restored. 

What was most noticeable about Paraguay, though, was its reputation (and reality) as – not even arguably – the continent’s most corrupt country. On the Brazilian border, the city of Ciudad del Este (formerly Puerto Presidente Stroessner, pictured below) was and is a chaotic bazaar of knock-off Rolexes and comparable merchandise, smuggled goods and other contraband that occupies almost every storefront. At that time, I recall reading a Wall Street Journal reporter’s interview of a Ciudad del Este “businessman” who, when asked about the potential impact of the Mercosur free trade agreement on Paraguay, responded that “The way I see it, we may have to stop smuggling things, and start producing things.”

The former Puerto Presidente Stroessner is now Ciudad del Este.

He spoke too soon. Several years later, I was crossing into Paraguay from the Argentine border city of Clorinda, in a small pickup truck that I had shipped from California to Chile. Presenting the vehicle’s papers to Paraguayan customs, I was taken aback – though I probably shouldn’t have been – when the customs official asked me “Do you want to sell it?” The fact is that many vehicles circulating on the country’s highways have been stolen in Argentina and Brazil, and surreptitious sales are not unusual. Since then, I’ve always been cautious in taking my vehicle into Paraguay.

Carlos Antonio López was a 19th-century Paraguayan strongman.

Nevertheless, there’s a certain inexplicable innocence in Paraguay’s pervasive corruption, which is something Paraguayans use to get by. Most recently, it’s been on display as residents of Asunción flock across the border to take advantage of favorable exchange rates – according to the Buenos Aires daily Clarín, the Argentine peso was worth 700 Paraguayan guaraníes a year ago, but today it’s worth less than 500. Prices for commodities like gasoline, wine and even basic food items are 30 to 60 percent cheaper in Argentina. Theoretically there are limits to what Paraguayans can take back across the border but, as my earlier encounter with Paraguayan customs suggested, the rules are flexible.

Book Review: The Practical Nomad

Ever since I first visited Latin America, with a spur-of-the-moment train ride from Mexicali to Mazatlán nearly 40 years ago, I have preferred to travel independently and – with the exception of a few necessarily fixed cruise ship itineraries - I’d sooner wing it. Even now, as my Moon Handbooks and other writings include suggested itineraries for those who must fit their travels into fixed periods from a week to a month or more, my own itineraries remain flexible.

Of course, I do travel differently than I did in the days before I had a family, a mortgage, and other responsibilities. Nearly all my travels now have to do with updating my Moon Handbooks to Argentina, Buenos Aires, Chile, and Patagonia, and this differs greatly from traveling “for pleasure.” Given that, almost every year, I spend four to five months in southernmost South America, when I return to my home in California, I don’t feel like traveling much farther than around the block, whenever my dog needs to go out. Even less do I feel like devoting a month or more to, say, take the Trans-Siberian Railway across Asia.

That’s not to say my travel is not pleasurable – I greatly enjoy revisiting the sights of the Southern Cone countries, and seeing people I have grown to know over more than two decades as a guidebook and travel writer. I enjoy good meals and fine wines, but at the same time I’m aware this is now work. While a first-time visitor to Buenos Aires needs to find one hotel, I need to know dozens or more; where the one-timer needs to know when the next bus leaves from Bariloche to El Bolsón, I need to know them all. Guidebook writing means long days and much of the product is inevitably formulaic – there’s only so much you can do with bus schedules.

I don’t regret this change in the way I travel but, at the same time, I do miss the spontaneity with which I once backpacked down the “Gringo Trail” all the way to Tierra del Fuego and through Western Europe in the days before the Berlin Wall came down. Another person who’s adapted to the times is my travel-writing colleague Edward Hasbrouck, probably the best-traveled person I know, who’s just released a new fifth edition of The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World.

The Practical Nomad is exactly what it says: a nuts-and-bolts manual on traveling abroad – not necessarily literally “around the world” - for extended periods of time. It is not destination-oriented; rather, it offers suggestions on how to get the best out of whatever destination you choose. I recall that, after renting our apartment in Buenos Aires, he and his companion Ruth Radetzky found plenty to see and do in muggy subtropical Posadas - a city that foreign air travelers rarely even see and most overlanders visit only long enough to change buses for Iguazú falls. To quote a phrase from the classic People’s Guide to Mexico, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

That said, it The Practical Nomad offers informed tips that, given Edward’s background as a professional travel agent and right-to-travel activist, are far more knowledgeable that the scuttlebutt rumors I used to get from other travelers whose paths I crossed. They are light years better than any crowd-sourced information on the Internet, even though I might quibble with some of his details. I agree with him, for instance, that the countryside of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay is best seen by rental car, but would emphasize that Chilean roads, particularly, are fast reaching North American standards – especially given the fact that Chile is investing in its infrastructure, even as the United States is letting its highways go to pot(holes).

The Practical Nomad, though, focuses on topics such as getting time off for foreign travel and financing it, flights and other transportation options, the bureaucracy of documents, visas and border crossings, and especially tech suggestions. Edward also writes the informative blog of the same name, The Practical Nomad, which stresses of freedom-of-travel issues but also provides perspective on topics such as The Amazing Race “reality” TV show.