Paraguay and the Aquidiban Boat

I’ve had some great adventures so far, but none that quite compare to the journey through Paraguay and up the river on the Aquidiban boat.

The story starts in mid-January when I met Ed, who quickly became a good friend, on the Navimag Ferry in Southern Chile. Ed lives in London but is traveling through South America as well, and we shared an interest in visiting Paraguay, a country with effectively no tourism. Fast forward a month: I was in Buenos Aires (more on that shortly) and Ed was on an island in Brazil, but we’d stayed in touch and he suggested we reconvene near the border and cross into Paraguay to see what we’d find. Ed has successfully traveled to a lot of very obscure countries, so he was a great partner for such an adventure and I agreed right away.

A quick update on Buenos Aires, since I did spend nearly two weeks there prior to Paraguay. I had a handful of friends in town (who I had met elsewhere on this trip), and we rented neighboring apartments in a lovely part of the city, with tree lined streets and cafes on every block. I was enrolled in Spanish School but skipped class more often than I care to admit, so it was two weeks of barbecues, fun nights out, and exploring the city by day. Here’s a photo from our final barbecue on my last night in town. Saying goodbye to this crew was really tough, but I’m sure I will see them elsewhere.

Elvis (from Austria), Ana (from Brazil), Me, Chris (from Germany), Clemens and Theo (also Austria)

Back to Paraguay: I reunited with Ed at Iguazu Falls, which is both the shared border towns of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, and the site of a large waterfall. We may be the first to ever visit the waterfall, which has millions of annual visitors, just to go to Paraguay, where literally no one goes. After the waterfall tour, we Googled how to cross into Paraguay, which we could see across a river. The answer was to walk across a bridge with two quick stops at each countries respective immigration offices. So we did exactly that, walked into Paraguay, and the adventure began.

We first spent a day in Ciudad del Este, the city we had walked to, which is famous for having a large black market in the street (you can buy guns and drugs in street stalls, allegedly). Then we took a bus to the capital, Asunción, where the local soccer team happened to play its biggest rival while we were in town. I’m now the proud owner of a Club Olimpia de Paraguay shirt, which I bought for $5 to blend-in as the only blond haired fan at the stadium. Here’s a video I took just outside the stadium:

From Asunción, we continued North to Concepción, a smaller town with much more of a third-world feel (i.e. dirt roads with horses pulling carts). The Lonely Planet guide book claimed there was a “luxury hotel” in town, which I nearly couldn’t believe, but we set off to find it and can now confirm that the place really does exist. Here’s a video of us looking for the luxury hotel:

I have no clue who visits the Concepción Palace Hotel (it had 58 rooms and we estimated 3 were occupied), but my best guess is local business travelers. It was cheap and properly luxurious:

Our next stop was further North, to the farm of a German named Peter who has spent 30 years in Paraguay, living off his farm and its two guest houses. Here’s the road to the farm:

We slept on the farm and then boarded the Aquidiban boat to continue North up the Paraguay River. The Aquidiban has transported food, local people, and other goods to remote towns for over 50 years. Some photos:

The boat was extremely hot, mosquitoes were plentiful, and our cabin looked like this:

To make matters worse, an unexpected storm blew the boat into a tree, where we got stuck for awhile:

One may wonder why we’d boarded the Aquidiban by choice. The answer is that we’d read an account of three backpackers who had successfully crossed into Bolivia by taking it as far North as possible, and Ed was determined to accomplish the same. I was much less determined to accomplish the same, but as Ed described it, with or without the border crossing, we were going to “bop down the river, see some animals, and have a really lovely time,” and that concept had some appeal in and of itself. So I agreed to join Ed for at least a portion of his journey to Bolivia, since I could in theory disembark early at a town along the way.

Having now ridden the Aquidiban, I would be unlikely to describe it as bopping down the river and having a really lovely time. On our first (and only) night on the boat, neither of us could sleep given the severe heat in our cabin. At 3:00 AM, and despite his great motivation to reach Bolivia, Ed said what we were both thinking: “fuck this, I’m out.”

The following afternoon, we disembarked together in a small riverside town called Vallemi. In the end, the allure of heading back to the Concepción Palace Hotel was much stronger than our desire to get to Bolivia by boat. One thing is for sure: we have utmost respect for the backpackers who made it into Bolivia this way.

The town of Vallemi, where we disembarked, was quite remote but we were in luck: locals go fishing in Vallemi, so there was a decent place to sleep. When we arrived, they asked if we wanted to take a ride in their fishing boat on the Paraguay River, and the answer was a definitive no. Here are some photos of Vallemi:

We then took a bus back to Concepción and checked into our favorite hotel, from where we were one more bus from the capital. However, on Peter’s farm we had acquired the contact of a local guy with a small plane. This seemed better than a long bus day, so we paid him a very reasonable fare and he flew us back to Asunción. He was adamant that his tail number be excluded from any photo of the plane, which seemed to indicate that he may not be licensed for commercial transport, but he got us where we needed to go:

All things considered, the Paraguay trip was a very great success. Experiencing remote regions of a country with practically no tourism to begin with was quite cool. The locals took photos with us on more than one occasion, like this woman who requested a photo (then requested my contact to send the photo) at the Aquidiban port:

Next up, I’m off to neighboring Uruguay to travel along the coast. Thanks for following!