Posts From Paraguay

This morning we were again at the bridge over the Rio Parana going from Brazil to Paraguay. The crowds of pedestrians carrying large shopping bags of Saturday were gone, replaced by large numbers of trucks choking the bridge and its approaches.

This morning we went off to look at some of the local ruins at the old Jesuit towns. The Jesuits arrived in the province of Paraguay in the early 1600's and set up a series of towns all with a common layout and construction. According to history they were very successful at converting and protecting the local Guarani Indians from Portuguese slavers. Apparently they were generally too successful as in the late 1700's the king of Spain expelled all Jesuits from South America.

The rain stopped threatening and became an actuality early in the night. Thereafter we had bouts of heavy rain on and off all night, it also made for a wet breakfast.

It rained heavily again last night, and to our shock and horror we discovered that we had left our book of maps and the Argentina guide book outside. They were saturated.