our incredibly short stay in paraguay, then brazil

michael is a much kinder human being than i am, and has tried to convince me to bite my tongue on my true feelings about paraguay. so maybe i will, just a little. prior to our crossing the border, i've only come to know one paraguayan, a friendly guy named oscar who for a few years had a paraguayan mate cafe in our neighborhood back home in philadelphia. i used to sit in the cafe and chat with him for hours (he wouldn't have it any other way, even if i had somewhere to be.). the cafe ultimately closed, probably because he had the habit of giving his food and drinks away for free. i didn't meet anyone in the actual country of paraguay i can speak of as highly. we met a police officer who pulled me over for doing nothing wrong, who tried to solicit a $100 bribe out of me to avoid having to take me to the station for a traffic violation he couldn't explain. i kept saying "por que?" (why?) and "no intiendo" (no understand) til he eventually got frustrated and waved us on, but it took a good fifteen minutes, and in that time i fianlized my opinion on paraguay. immediately after fleeing that scene, we got stuck in horrendous traffic going over the bridge to brazil. some kids with a squeegie tried to wash my car windows for money, despite my telling them about fifteen times to back off. then they leaned in my car window for money. i have a very strict rule about only paying for things i seek out which i developed after spending a lot of time in india. a lot of people make money in india by pushing things on tourists they don't ask for, and then asking for money. i started telling them "no" firmly and a few times, and if they insist on continuing to push their services on me, then it's free. it's become a really big pet peeve of mine. even if i wanted my windows washed, i would have made a point of calling them over. and i really don't care if it's only a couple of cents to me and perhaps a meal or something to them: i don't support people making money by taking advantage of other (nicer) people, period. so after this kid leaned into my window for about five minutes, he proceeded to then wash the back window, too. i give up. to add insult to injury, our arroz frito con camarones (fried rice with shrimp) from the chinese place we dined in gave us about two and a half tiny shrimp, and charged more than US prices. i was SO DONE with paraguay.  OK, i guess i didn't bite my tongue much. sorry michael. i will always admire your kind nature.   

anyway so we hightailed it out of paraguay after about 24 hours, and now i have all this paraguayan currency to exchange. now we're in brazil!  we made it to rio de janeiro in about three days, taking a break in sao paolo for capirinhas and weird pizza. pizza is the #1 thing on a list i'm forming of things i will not miss about south america, but sao paolo's pizza wasn't the worst, and the very strong capirinhas made me less bitter about my imperfect pizza. there was also a band, who we're pretty sure was elastica. remember them? we're fairly certain they've learned portugese and moved to sao paolo and played at this dive bar on a rainy sunday night. it was a good time, at any rate.

brazil shares a lot of common ground with texas.
- HUGE HUGE RESTAURANTS
- SERVING HUGE HUGE PORTIONS OF COW
- they really don't understand vegetarianism
- lots of things are big here, like roads, cities, churches, the country itself

brazil, they also can't drive here. i grew up in maryland, next to virginia, and now live in pennsylvania, next to new jersey... but virginia and jersey drivers, who we love to make fun of, can't compete with the brazilians' lack of respect for their own lives or your car or road signs or speed limits or wet pavement. we've seen three overturned vehicles here so far, and we haven't driven THAT far through brazil yet. on a driving note, the bug is still working, kind of. though the other day was the second day we've seen rain on our ENTIRE trip, and our windshield wipers broke. so even driving in the night with about five feet of visibility (try it sometime - it's really hard!) i still think we did a better job of navigating the roads than the brazilians around us.  

so now we're in rio de janeiro! off to see what this town is about, and hopefully find something to eat that isn't part of a cow.

apparently we weren't the only ones hellbent on getting out of paraguay. longest border crossing line yet!

big market in cuidad del este, paraguay.  you can buy cheap things here, like a ton of socks for $2 or a nice watch for $5. we got both.

sunrise in brazil

i love waking up in time for sunrise! so much easier when you're sleeping in the car.

fog. this is about when our windshield wipers called it quits.

not an easy drive.

this is where we woke up in the car this morning.