12/6: A Snapshot of Asuncion, Paraguay

Two years ago, Steven and I toured through a good chunk of South America for 3.5 months but we never made it to Paraguay. When we decided to return to the continent to visit Antarctica and Patagonia, we made sure to add enough time to see the capital, Asuncion, and tour the Mission area in the southern part of the country as part of our six-week trip to the continent. We were extremely fortunate having hired an excellent driver and guide, Jose Acosta, for six days after reading recommendations on the Trip Advisor Paraguay forum. For those of you unsure about your geography of South America as I was, Paraguay is a landlocked country bordered by Bolivia to the north, Brazil to the east, and Argentina to the south and west. Asuncion, situated on the Rio de la Plata upriver from what is now Buenos Aires, was so named as it was founded on the feast of the Assumption of Mary on August 15th, 1537. 

On our way into town from the airport along the Costanera or waterfront, Jose gave us a few facts about his country. The indigenous language, Guarani, was spoken by 60% of the people with the other language being Spanish; the money was also Guarani; 90% of the population is Christian with 80% Catholic and the rest are evangelicals; and there have been more than 40 coups in Paraguay!

It was sad seeing the hovels by the water. Jose explained that Asuncion is beset by floods and drought. This part of the city experienced such severe flooding until May the city should be known not as Venice but as Atlantis as the water level rose more than eight meters or about 25 feet! The driest month is normally August.

I was astonished to learn that Paraguay had the third highest number of barges in the world after the US and China even though it's a landlocked country. There was a massive rebuilding project going on along the Costanera with trees planted and brand new benches every few feet.

Just as we'd seen in Buenos Aires at the beginning of our trip, Asuncion's Costanera had a large nature reserve with 625 different species of birds. If we were there in the morning, we'd see lots of cormorants, Jose told us.

Did you know Paraguay is the only country that has a different coat-of-arms on each side of their flag? More of that in future posts!

After settling in at our historic hotel in the center of the capital and making arrangements to meet Jose in three days to begin our tour, Steven and I walked around the city for a couple of hours. Our first impressions of Asuncion were anything but positive with its streets and sidewalks in generally lousy condition, trash littering the roads everywhere, masses of overhead wires like in a third world nation, and parks that were hard to describe as attractive.

Two views of the Panteon or Pantheon: more on that in the next post.

Items for sale made walking on sidewalks difficult.

Just behind the Panteon was the Plaza de los Heroes, one large square divided into four quarters by a road, so it was technically four adjoining squares.

In one of the squares was a bronze statue called Reason and Force which depicted two struggling figures.

In the same square a few vendors were still open and selling typical Paraguayan crafts that I had read about and was anxious to see in the week ahead while we toured the southern part of the country.

Images like this are unfortunately my takeaway of Asuncion even after spending a couple more days in the capital city. Steven and I both wondered how so much of a capital city could be so depressing and run down with poorly maintained streets and sidewalks, electrical wires hanging down and onto the sidewalks, graffiti commonplace, etc. It seemed that there was precious little evidence of any civic pride from what we saw that evening and that was also largely reinforced the next two days. It certainly made us hope that the other parts of Paraguay we'd be viewing would be far more attractive than the capital.

Old but colorful buses were the norm in Asuncion. We realized the next day how very cheap they were, so that was one advantage!

An upscale restaurant across from a swanky hotel were a big surprise as they looked so out of whack with the rest of the poor city.

Boarded up buildings were not uncommon in the city center.

Our hotel, the 19th century Asuncion Palace, was certainly a find and had been lovingly restored after being the home of the president's brother.

Eating out anywhere in Paraguay could only be described as a complete steal if visiting from North America or Europe. The prices were absurdly low and the food we had everywhere was good, for us non foodies at least! We smiled initially when Steven's beer or pop was served in an ice bucket but then realized that was the norm all over Paraguay!

Next post: Looking for the bright side about Asuncion: some history, some charm but also another slice of life.

Posted on January 28th, 2020, from Denver, a day after we received the first drops of precipitation all month. 

12/5: A Sad Santiago

After a blissful few weeks in Antarctica and a small part of the Chilean section of Patagonia, we flew onto Santiago, the capital of Chile, for two nights before going onto Paraguay for the last section of our six week trip. When we planned this trip months and months ago, we had been really looking forward to returning to Santiago, a city we'd first visited two years ago as part of a three plus month trip to South America.

It was so sad witnessing immediately how much the former beautiful Santiago had changed due to the civil unrest that had begun about two months previously. The problems began when the government increased the cost of using the local metro system by the equivalent of a quarter. That was all it took to spark widespread riots in Santiago that soon spread throughout Chile because of the huge economic divide between the rich and poor in Chile.

This turned out to be the only place we saw in all of Santiago where an attempt had been made to get rid of the graffiti. 

We only had the one day to re-visit Santiago so we set out to explore it. Near our hotel in the center of the city was Cerro Santa Lucia, an attractive hill with interconnected paths and plazas that we'd enjoyed exploring previously.

The impressive National Archives:

It was with some trepidation that we walked through Plaza Vicuna Mackenna as there were a lot of homeless people and others clearly down on their luck.

One of many monuments in the city that caught our attention:

Across a major thoroughfare from Santa Lucia was a souvenir market called Centro Artesanal Santa Lucia with both indigenous and locally made crafts. Many of the kiosks featured lapis lazuli jewelry so it was lots of fun wandering around! Because of all the unrest, there were few tourists so the vendors had to be suffering financially.

Sadly, damage like this to banks and shops was more the norm.

At the foot of Cerro Santa Lucia was the block-long classical facade of the National Library, that was founded in 1813 and had one of the oldest and most extensive collections in South America.

CLH Suites was our old stomping ground on three separate occasions in Santiago in late 2017. It was a shell of what it had been. No wonder we'd received an email shortly before we left for Antarctica saying the hostel cum hotel had had to close and we needed to find another place to stay for the two nights we would be in Santiago.

Directly across from CLH was what had been a topnotch hotel, now only accessible via narrow doorway. How sad to see even the replica moai statues from Easter Island desecrated in front of the hotel.

Quite surreal to see the bar and restaurant named after former President Bill Clinton!

If you click on the photo below, you will notice the graffiti someone had written referring to the country being a torture state.

We enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at this Chinese restaurant when we were in Santiago in 2017. How sad it was to see the graffiti and the restaurant almost totally boarded up. Several hours later, we returned for old times' sake. Unfortunately, this was one of those times we shouldn't have as it wasn't nearly as good as my memory! 

Two years ago, these chess tables in the Plaza de Armas were always filled with older men playing chess each time we passed by.

We noticed several health-care professionals working in pairs approach people in the square asking if they needed care. 

The square's fountain was as beautiful as we remembered from our prior visit. Since we'd seen so much of the city back in late 2017, there were no particular places we wanted to visit in the city this time around. Since we knew we'd be on the go pretty well non-stop touring much of southern Paraguay for the next week, we found one of the few benches in the shade in the square and read our kindles for over an hour while watching people pass by.  

Fortunately no damage had been done to the stately Post Office or the city's Iglesia San Francisco that surrounded the square. Construction of the church began in 1586 with the neoclassical tower added in 1857 after a series of earthquakes. The church was the city's oldest structure, greatest symbol and main landmark. 

Surprisingly, there were no police visible in or around the square. For some reason, there was no evidence that we saw of any damage to some of the city's most important landmarks. I wish there had been someone we could have asked why the Plaza de Armas had been left alone. I wondered if possibly the cultural institutions had been considered sacrosanct?

A large display of photos that chronicled the unrest caught our attention in the square. We were so thankful we hadn't been in Santiago earlier when the violence had been so bad. However, we still felt a lot of unease as tensions seemed to simmer just below the surface.

Just a couple of blocks away was Constitution Square, the country's most formal plaza which was lined by government buildings. 

The square was defined by a dozen Chilean flags.

The Palacio de la Moneda or originally the royal mint was completed in 1805 and became the presidential palace in 1846 for more than 100 years. When President Salvador Allende defended his presidency against the assault of General Augusto Pinochet in the 1973 coup, the palace was bombarded by the military. Allende committed suicide at the palace.

Monuments to notable national figures adorned the square.

While walking around the city that morning, we'd only seen a couple traffic cops out on the streets and armed and bullet-proof-wearing guards in grocery stores. When we reached the historical area with all the government buildings, there was a marked increase in police presence everywhere all of a sudden. Massive police buses and police officers were omnipresent. It was hard to know to feel more relieved they were around or more anxious!

I remember writing in a previous post from two years ago about being surprised how many Canadian Scotiabanks there were in Santiago. The vibrant Paseo Bandera was designed by Chilean artist Dasic Fernandez to draw pedestrians to the street in lieu of cars.

This was a more attractive and cheaper way of covering up a building's facade than with boards or fencing to ward off graffiti artists or those intent on damaging storefronts.

The Santiago Stock Exchange was the third largest in South America.

After a break back at the hotel, we decided to walk along Bernardo O'Higgins, the city's main boulevard that seemed to stretch forever. As we were heading toward Plaza Italia, where the main demonstrations had taken place, there was again a massive police presence. It was unsettling seeing tanks and armored vehicles along the major thoroughfare and side streets. 

We saw many more street vendors on O'Higgins and neighboring streets than we remembered from before. Lots were selling handkerchiefs, likely to cover mouths from tear gas. One enterprising salesperson was offering brightly colored goggles for sale, again to protect one's eyes in the event of tear gas, I figured.

Was walking in this part of Santiago the safest place to go and the smartest idea? Probably not, but I particularly was very curious to get out of our 'comfort zone' and see for ourselves what had taken place so recently.

Seeing what had been remarkable monuments so desecrated was heartbreaking as we could only wonder if and when they might be restored to their former beauty.

Never before had we walked down city streets where, for block after block, not one store was open. I could only imagine the horrific financial hit small store owners had taken as a result of the unrest that had started months ago and if they might recover. We also felt for all the people whose jobs had been lost as a result of the unrest that caused so many stores to shutter their doors. 

Clearly, bus services and trash pick up were obviously up and running unlike so many of the city's metro stations that had been destroyed. All the stores around our hotel closed by the unusually early hour of 8, one more sign that the city was so affected by the protests.

The huge roundabout known as Plaza Italia was Ground Zero for what has been described as Chile's 'social earthquake.' The plaza had been chosen because it was the symbolic site in the country's history for social struggle.

This plaza had been turned into a first aid station for protesters.

I wish we had had a better knowledge of Spanish to have better comprehended the signs we saw as we walked along O'Higgins. I think, though, the pictures told a thousand words.

Two years ago while on a walking tour of the city, we had learned about the popular ice cream shop, Emporia La Rosa, located in Parque Forrestal. It was great fun returning there unlike eating at the Chinese restaurant once again!

Even after walking eight miles around the city that day, it was hard coming to terms with seeing so many barricades and only small doorways open to enter shops and hotels.

Just ten days ago, I read that there was once again a lot more strife in Santiago. When might it end and who or what can bring the people together again?

Next post: Asuncion, Paraguay, here we come!

Posted on January 25th, 2020, amid all the impeachment trial hoopla.