12/9: Silver & a Breath of Fresh Air Away from Asuncion!

In all of our years of overseas travel together, Steven and I had never entertained the thought of trying to hire a private driver from here in the States for more than a couple of days and that also involved moving from city to city. When researching the sights we wanted to see in the southern part of Paraguay, it soon became evident that the South American country was not set up for foreign tourists as the other nations in the continent were. There was no infrastructure for traveling from town to town that we were used to when we saw a good chunk of South America over a 3.5 month period back in 2017. Paraguay is definitely off the 'tourist radar' with virtually no one on travel blogs talking about wanting to travel there, preferring the 'big name' countries of Peru, Chile and Brazil. That certainly didn't deter us as we fancy ourselves wanting to get off the tourist track and see the 'roads less traveled.'

When beginning to plan this portion of our six-week trip to Antarctica, Patagonia and Paraguay last summer, I was extremely fortunate finding a lone reference on an old Trip Advisor forum to a driver cum guide someone had used when he had traveled in Paraguay. Fortunately, the contact information had been provided so, after months of emails back and forth detailing exactly what Steven and I wanted to visit in each city, including specific shops that sold Paraguay's famous handicrafts, we met Jose for the first time! He'd picked us at the airport in Paraguay's capital city of Asuncion on December 6th, dropped us off at our hotel so we could have the weekend to explore the city's 'sights' and was there to start our tour bright and early on December 9th. Steven and I knew almost instantly we'd lucked out having Jose as our driver and guide for the next week - his English was almost flawless, his driving skills were excellent, but above all, he was a superb companion and guide the entire week.

Jose readily agreed to change our itinerary right off the bat by taking us to the Museo de la Silla de Asuncion or MUSA, aka the  Museum of Chairs, as it'd been closed when Steven and I tried to visit the quirky museum a couple of days previously without luck. Jose was able to locate a woman in the adjacent design center to open up the museum and turn on the lights for us and waited while we then walked around. As there was no admission fee, we tipped her instead.

The museum was a circular five-floor tower of about 400 chairs that had been assembled by Argentine architect and long-time Paraguay resident, Nicolas Jury, who had also designed the building. 

NOT a chair for sitting on, that was for sure!

A German high chair from the 19th century:

On the seat of the chair were about 1500 photographs of football fans taken by Argentine Martin Crespo!

The German-American Mies van der Rohe, considered one of the pioneers of modernist architecture, created this Barcelona Chair in 1929.

Under what looked like a cake dome, were miniature plastic chairs of assorted styles.

The museum was so enormous we unfortunately missed catching sight of the barber's chair sat in by astronaut Neil Armstrong, and a four-meter high copy of a ladder-back chair by Charles Mackintosh, the 19th Scottish pioneer of industrial design. Remember that name, Mackintosh, as you'll see references to him when I finally finish the posts on our trip to Ireland and the United Kingdom which we went on from mid-August to early October last year, i.e. just a month before leaving for this current trip.

Examples of Guarani indigenous apyka or seats:

The unusual museum was a fun way to start the first day of our tour with Jose.

As we passed the shell of a building, Jose explained that 430 people had died there in 2011 in a supermarket fire. 200 of them had perished from toxic fumes after the owner had told emergency responders to lock the doors as he thought the people inside wanted to steal the contents! A memorial would be finally going up soon, according to Jose.

In our research of what to see in Paraguay, we learned about the famous Circuito de Oro or Golden Circuit, a collection of small towns east and southeast of Asuncion. The area was of interest to us because the great majority of Paraguay crafts were based in the towns. Because of the lack of public transportation in Paraguay, the only way to visit the towns was by hiring a driver and that was what started our search for one so many months ago. We stopped for several minutes at the lovely Holy Trinity Church outside Asuncion that had been completed in the 1850s.

The church had a stunning painted ceiling.

I asked Jose why someone had left mangoes just outside the church and he said that there are too many for the owners to eat so extras are left in public places for others to have. Mangoes accidentally came to Paraguay from India and Brazil in soldiers' bags. Mango trees were used for great shade, Jose said, because no grass can grow under their dense canopy. 

Just by the mangoes were these upright pieces of wood that looked like ears of corn on steroids! We learned they were flor de coco, a fragrant wood from the very heavy coconut flower plant and were used to create nativity sets for people wanting to make their own. 

Ready-made nativity sets were available for sale a short distance away.

The Monument to Women honored women who supported Paraguay after a staggering 92.6% of the adult male population were killed in the Triple Alliance War, a South American war fought from 1864 to 1870, between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. It was the deadliest and bloodiest inter-nation war in Latin America's history.

Jose remarked that when Pope John Paul visited Paraguay in 1988, a stage was made from the flor de coco, cabbages, corn and coconut in this field beyond the fence. The pope's visit had helped restore democracy to Paraguay after Alfredo Stroessner had been in power for 35 years. His rule, marked by an uninterrupted period of repression, was the longest in modern South American history. Stroessner was overthrown in 1989, a year after the pope's visit.

Just past the field was an air force base Jose wanted us to see because of its scale model airplanes located just outside its entrance.

Seeing a chair museum and all these model airplanes, all within a couple of hours of each other around Asuncion, boded well for our tour of Paraguay!

Even though neither Steven nor I were fans of what we would call  'soccer' but is called football everywhere else except Canada and the US, Jose wanted to show us the headquarters for Commebol, the governing body of football in South America. One of FIFA's six continental confederations, Commebol was the oldest continental confederation in the world and located in Luque, near Asuncion.

Flags in alphabetical order of the countries belonging to Commebol lined the avenue to the offices and to the Bourbon Hotel "where all the stars stay," Jose said. He was understandingly so proud of Paraguay being the host country for Commebol that we got out and walked around for a bit, trying to evince some interest for his sake! Football in Paraguay wasn't a 'sport' but more akin to a religion, we discovered from Jose!

We were excited reaching Luque a few minutes later as the city was famous for making harps and guitars and for the silver filigree jewelry that was one of Paraguay's most beautiful traditional crafts. I admit to being more excited to wanting to see the jewelry stores than the music shops! Ever since being mugged two years ago in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, I had since only wore silver jewelry while traveling overseas. I was hoping I might find a couple of pairs of earrings that would be a great reminder of this trip.

We were curious seeing the blue and yellow painted walls as we entered the city. To understand how crazy a football country Paraguay is, Luque had painted the wall in their local football team's colors. We realized in the coming days, every city had its own team and celebrated accordingly with flags galore, etc!

Jose mentioned the Sanabria family was especially well known for making harps in Paraguay.

Jose parked just beside this stand that sold the ingredients for terere, the country's national drink. Similar to an iced herbal tea, it’s made with cold water right away, rather than brewed with hot water, which is then cooled. It was very common seeing people of all ages drinking terere out of large flasks everywhere in Paraguay.

Before treating myself to look at some of the jewelry stores, Jose suggested we walk to the Plaza General Aquino. At the entrance to the park were symbols of its music-making history. When we told Jose we'd made a point of seeing Jose Asuncion Flores' home the day before, he stated that Flores had developed the genre of music called 'guarania' which was for serenading, not for dancing. Flores had been a street kid who had been apprehended by the police and came into contact with their band director!

In the park was a mausoleum cum museum associated with the famous general of the Triple Alliance War who was born in an outlining hamlet.

I knew that Luque was famous for its silver filigree jewelry but I sure hadn't figured on having an entire street, Avenida de los Joyeros or Jewelers' Avenue, devoted to selling filigree jewelry made into earrings, brooches, pendants, etc! Jose had told us people come from all over Paraguay to buy wedding rings made here because of the huge selection, the prices were 15%-20% less expensive and pieces could be custom-made. It was fun going from store to store looking at, and yes, even buying, some of the less ornate earrings!

Luque was also a perfect place to buy silver pitchers and leather-covered flasks to hold the terere drink. 

Even one of the city's main streets, the pedestrianized Peatonal, had gotten into supporting the home-town football team by painting their colors down the middle of the street! The very attractive street had old colonnades along both sides.

On a nearby plaza was the bright and airy Virgen del Rosario church. High in the apse was a painting of the Virgin giving the rosary to St. Dominic.

The Virgin was the central of three figures in the modern reredos or large altarpiece.

We didn't spend much time in Luque because there were so many other places we still wanted to see that day, but both Steven and I were impressed far more with what we'd seen there than the two days we'd wandered around the capital city which had been very depressing.

As we headed south toward the town of San Lorenzo, Jose commented that everybody in Paraguay was very polite until you get them behind the wheel. Then, they're like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde! I am glad to report that Jose was nothing like his compatriots.

Jose chatted about the local priest in the early 1900s who had visited Europe and so admired the Gothic churches he'd seen. As a result, the town's cathedral was changed from colonial construction to a Neo-Gothic design with pale blue paint! 

When I asked Jose when and why he'd become a guide, he responded saying it had been 30 years as it was a way of seeing life and the world with so many cultures. He added that people who come to Paraguay, in his experience, were mostly older and had visited many other countries. That certainly described us. Paraguay was a nation of 7 million people with 14.5 million cattle. He joked that his fellow Paraguayans felt if they had no piece of meat in front of them, there was nothing to eat! Our son and two of my brothers would sure have a tough time being vegetarians here!

We'd added San Lorenzo to our itinerary specifically to stop at the Museo Boggani named after an Italian explorer and painter who was one of the first people who had taken an interest in the culture of the indigenous people in the Chaco, an area well north of Asuncion we wouldn't have time to see. We'd hoped to see items from prehistoric excavations and implements and cult objects among other things from different indigenous groups. As Jose had feared when we began emailing back and forth months ago, the museum was closed.

With our first glimpse of the Church of San Lorenzo Martir, we felt like we'd been transported back to Europe all of a sudden! The gardens surrounding the church were just stunning and unlike anything we'd viewed in two plus days in Asuncion.

We saw about 20 recycling containers in the church gardens, more than we'd seen in all of Asuncion!

In the gardens was a monument to the ninos martires, the children who'd died in a 1869 battle during the Triple Alliance War. Since there were virtually no adult soldiers left, Mariscal Lopez, the leader, had an 'army' of 3,000 children under 15 who dressed as adults with painted beards and 500 old men and wounded who were slaughtered by the Triple Alliance army. Tragically, only two survived.

The gardens or plaza around the church far surpassed anything in Asuncion. We kept wondering how that was the case as it seemed natural to think the capital would have the loveliest plazas, parks, buildings, etc but that wasn't the case anywhere we toured once we were away from the capital.

The women in the plaza were selling the ingredients for terere.

Unlike the Plaza de Armas by the government buildings in Asuncion, none of the black and white tiles were missing here!

The local football team's colors prettied up the electrical poles in San Lorenzo!

Around the plaza and neighboring streets were some lovely old colonial homes with colonnades of round pillars.  Jose told us that that these and the pillars from the preceding photos were made from an extremely hard wood called urundeymi that sinks when placed in the river. 

Next post: Gallery of monsters and saint makers in Capiata, nanduti lace in Itagua, Ita'o tree in Aregua and still more, all on December 9th. No wonder I had to divide the day into two posts!

Posted on February 7th, 2020, from Denver as the city and all the suburbs are being inundated with snow. All the schoolkids were happy when they woke up this morning to discover they had a snow day!