Anyone that knows me know that one of my biggest goal in life is to visit 100 countries. I moved to Brazil this summer and while I am here, I want to visit all the countries in South America and the Caribbean while I'm close.
Paraguay is not known as a tourist country, but it is only a two hour flight from Sao Paulo so I decided to head over there for Carnaval. Paraguay has one UNESCO site(the least visited UNESCO site in the world) - some Jesuit missions- and I really wanted to go. Sadly, it did not work out. You can take rickety busses to Encarnacion and then do a mix of worse busses and hitch hiking to get the rest of the way. Encarnacion is the only city in Paraguay that does Carnaval so it was a little crazy right now and I just didn't feel safe doing all that alone. I checked with two tour places who tried to match me up with someone else that wanted to go (to go by myself would be really expensive) but it didn't work out. I decided to be ok with it.
The currency is crazy! about 5500 guarani per dollar - so my hair cut that was 140,000 was about 25 USD.
I spent the first two nights in the historic downtown at the Cecilia hotel (the workers were super nice trying to help me get to the missions). I walked around, visited at old train station, read in the park, etc.
The train museum was pretty interesting and it was nice to be in the shade and out of the heat.
I moved to a different hotel for the last three nights - Esplendor Wyndham - which I got for an amazing price because it's Paraguay!
The neighborhood around it was not very walkable, but there were some malls nearby so I walked in those and got a haircut!! I haven't gotten it trimmed since May and it was getting really stringy. My hair has always been fine and thin, but since I got sick (with Lupus) it has been pretty non-existent. Going to a new hairdresser is stressful. They are always horrified at my hair and ask if I have cancer. When I say I don't, they ask if I've seen a doctor because it looks like I'm sick. Then I feel like I have to explain and then they talk about stuff to regrow my hair, wigs, etc. The whole thing is uncomfortable and I figured with Brazil's focus on looks, it would be even worse there. So I have avoided getting my hair cut. The guys at the Paraguayan salon were nice. The first guy washed my hair for like 12 minutes. Which was weird since I have so little hair!! Then the guy cutting it acted like there was actual hair to cut - took like 30 minutes. I had this great lady in Mumbai - She'd squirt my hair a few times with a water bottle, snip snip and I was out in 7 minutes! This whole salon thing was weird, but my hair looks a lot better!!
Paraguay is not known as a tourist country, but it is only a two hour flight from Sao Paulo so I decided to head over there for Carnaval. Paraguay has one UNESCO site(the least visited UNESCO site in the world) - some Jesuit missions- and I really wanted to go. Sadly, it did not work out. You can take rickety busses to Encarnacion and then do a mix of worse busses and hitch hiking to get the rest of the way. Encarnacion is the only city in Paraguay that does Carnaval so it was a little crazy right now and I just didn't feel safe doing all that alone. I checked with two tour places who tried to match me up with someone else that wanted to go (to go by myself would be really expensive) but it didn't work out. I decided to be ok with it.
The currency is crazy! about 5500 guarani per dollar - so my hair cut that was 140,000 was about 25 USD.
I spent the first two nights in the historic downtown at the Cecilia hotel (the workers were super nice trying to help me get to the missions). I walked around, visited at old train station, read in the park, etc.
The train museum was pretty interesting and it was nice to be in the shade and out of the heat.
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| Dining car that you can go into |
I moved to a different hotel for the last three nights - Esplendor Wyndham - which I got for an amazing price because it's Paraguay!
The neighborhood around it was not very walkable, but there were some malls nearby so I walked in those and got a haircut!! I haven't gotten it trimmed since May and it was getting really stringy. My hair has always been fine and thin, but since I got sick (with Lupus) it has been pretty non-existent. Going to a new hairdresser is stressful. They are always horrified at my hair and ask if I have cancer. When I say I don't, they ask if I've seen a doctor because it looks like I'm sick. Then I feel like I have to explain and then they talk about stuff to regrow my hair, wigs, etc. The whole thing is uncomfortable and I figured with Brazil's focus on looks, it would be even worse there. So I have avoided getting my hair cut. The guys at the Paraguayan salon were nice. The first guy washed my hair for like 12 minutes. Which was weird since I have so little hair!! Then the guy cutting it acted like there was actual hair to cut - took like 30 minutes. I had this great lady in Mumbai - She'd squirt my hair a few times with a water bottle, snip snip and I was out in 7 minutes! This whole salon thing was weird, but my hair looks a lot better!!
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| The view from my hotel |
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| Rooftop pool |
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