Google Earth.

2-24-09

Matthew Marz, my sister´s fiancee, was right. There are essentially two main paved roads in this country. Not surprisingly, they are popular. Ruta UNO runs north-south . I´m on the bus right now going back to Guarambare from near Encarnacion. I have to go north. The bus was doing just that until about 45 minutes ago. Then we simply stopped moving. Ruta UNO was shut down. People on this completely full bus seemed only slightly surprised by this. We waited. People got off of the bus and trucks and cars close by. Then the bus driver did a near 20 point turn. Thanks to the fact that I was reading in English, my Spanish needs work, and no formal announcement was made, I was briefly confused. Then we turned off onto a gravel road. We´re trying to go around and take a detour. I have a feeling that we´ll be on this road for quite some time. We´re passing lots of farms, guys with cowboy hats, and people who look especially confused to see our big AC´ed bus pass by.

I can´t write more because it is so bumpy but if you´re bored, take a look at google earth. Start to look at South America. Then take a closer look at Paraguay. See all that space with no lines whatever? No roads? I´m somewhere in the midst of all that...unsure of how many hours this´ll add to my 5 hour busride.

NOTE: It added only about an hour and I clearly survived. I also have never actually looked at Paraguay through google earth because I only use cyber cafe comps, though I´m interested to know what it looks like.