Why, why?

So why did I go? Why, indeed, does one go on vacation to places outside the main touristic routes, especially when one hasn't exhausted, or even scraped past the surface of, the treasure of worthy touristic riches of a country like Argentina?

I went to Posadas due to a simple economic fact: I can't afford hotels. I mean, I could afford a passable hotel, and even a good hotel for a few days, but it would cost me money I'd rather spend on something else, like staying more days or suddenly deciding to take a bus and leave for another place. Priorities, priorities! Posadas had a hostel, or at least something that my Hostelling International map/chart of Argentina showed as a hostel, though it was more like a storehouse for cheap tourists (you check in and get assigned a place to put your stuff and, at night, your body). Anyway, it was a fine place except for the shower, which was never hot enough, and then they have a good excuse for that, with Posadas being in a subtropical climate zone and all.

I went to Encarnación because it was close to Posadas and I wanted to see another country. It didn't disappoint me. It was quick and cheap to come and go, and there were nice surprises, and the customs bureaucracy was not that bad.

Now why, why Oberá? Why going 100 km almost literally into the forest and land on a pension where the bed was older than me and you had to yank a chain after you went to the bathroom? Maybe because of that, precisely: because I've had enough of the big city and the complicated stuff and things that look just as home. Maybe because I got a recommendation from a friend, and I had a good feeling about it (the place indeed had good vibes). Or just because. You'd have to visit Oberá, if you can, and walk your shoes off along those hill chains they call avenues, and talk to the people, to understand why such an impulse trip paid off so much. I don't have the ability to convey why Oberá was so beautiful to me, why on my first day there I sent an SMS to my friend in Rosario to thank him for telling me to go to Oberá, and why I haven't stopped singing its praises in front of everyone I know and boring them all with pictures and stories about Oberá.

When the lady in the clothing shop asked me why, she was at first under the impression I was some kind of man-with-a-mission specimen. "Are you here for the shorts?", she inquired (meaning not clothes, but the international festival of short independent films being held in Oberá, by coincidence, at the time). "No", I said, "I'm here just to look around." "You told me you were a journalist, right?" I laughed. "Nothing of the sort. I'm a photographer... well, I just walk over here and there and take pictures." I hope she wasn't disappointed. I'm inclined to believe she wasn't. Only two days later, when I told her I was leaving in the afternoon, she said: "Oooh, but you can't leave! What a pity, now that we've started to care for you!"

Encarnación

The day I went to Encarnación was cold, rainy, dark, and windy. What a pleasure. I had four layers of clothing on. The little bus that takes you there runs through the center of Posadas, so I had to wake up early to catch it.

Going through customs is like a punishment. Once you get to the Argentine foot of the Roque González bridge, you have to get off the bus and form a queue before a cramped customs office where half a dozen clerks will get your National Identity Document (DNI), note it down, and return it to you. You exit on the other end of the room, and get on the bus again. The bus hops merrily along the bridge all across the Paraná River, and when you get to the Paraguayan side you have to disembark again, and make a run for the customs office. You hand them your DNI, they check it and give you a piece of paper with a stamp and the DNI number in it. Somebody'll ask for it when you return to Argentina, and if you don't have it they'll charge you 50 pesos, or dollars, according to the variant horror stories told by the passengers. If you don't get your stamped pass quickly, the bus will just move on without you and you'll have to wait for the next one.

I caught the bus just in time. I'd been instructed to stay in it as it progressed through the lower (physically and sociologically) neighbourhoods of Encarnación, up to the top. For better or worse, I got off at the bus terminal. I don't have pictures of that part of the city because I was a bit scared of taking out a shiny, if obsolete and cheap, digital camera, and parade around with it taking pictures like the stereotypical stupid tourist. The area around the terminal is full of people trying to get a few coins from you, to sell you watches or pirate DVDs, or to activate the chip on your cell phone for nothing.

Now, before somebody accuses me of being derisive to Paraguay, there are other parts of Encarnación where you won't do business either, and they're no worse than some parts of Rosario, of Buenos Aires, and of every other big Argentine city where I've been. It was the density that threw me off in Encarnación. I walked away a few blocks and I found a wholly different view. The city has a very nice Plaza de Armas, which is the main square, which I assume is called "Arms Plaza" because it was where the army was amassed in times of need, and that's what it was called in colonial times. Encarnación was founded at about the same time as Posadas on the opposite side of the river, in 1615 — it's a very, very old place.

There's a tree in the plaza that testifies to the very age of the settlement. It's called a curupay, which I'm told is Patagonian Rosewood, though I don't see how anything Patagonian can be found growing 1,500 km north of Patagonia. It's only about half the age of the city — just below 200 years.

Encarnación was initially a typical colonial Spanish city, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries it received a lot of immigration from several sources: like Misiones in Argentina, it welcomed a lot of people from central and eastern Europe; and it also encouraged the settlement of Japanese people, something Brazil up north also did (on a massive scale). The traces can be seen readily just by looking around; the last name of the mayor of the city is Schmalko, there are plaques and small monuments thanking the hard-working community of Germans that helped the town grow, and even a bust honouring Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko; and at least one employment agency offers jobs in Japan for people of Japanese descent up to the fourth generation.

The Catholic faith has been losing ground to evangelical denominations throughout South America for decades, but in Encarnación there are already well established, traditional non-Catholic Christian churches. From the central European immigrant component, I hoped to see a lot of Lutheran churches (something I saw later in Oberá, Misiones), but I'd neglected the eastern Europeans' faith. It was certainly strange to spot the rounded domes of Orthodox temples in Paraguay. The pictures below are St. George and St. Nicholas:

Another strange sight was the wealth. Not the healthy wealth of a vibrant progressive city (though Encarnación looked quite lively in that respect), but the kind of dubious wealth that shows in an over-abundance of big, shiny, squeakly clean new SUVs and an astonishing proportion of Mercedes rolling in the streets. I swear the bulky Mitsubishis and Toyotas plus the Mercedes made up at least 50% of the vehicles. The same kind of wealth showed even more insidiously in luxurious, mafia-boss-type houses that clashed terribly with their humbler surroundings.

Disregarding that, I liked Encarnación. There aren't many places that look good in such a bad weather. Encarnación has those same deliciously sloping and winding streets as Posadas, those same trees and plants and flowers everywhere, and it must be beautiful if you manage to see it under the sun, even in winter. I had no such opportunity.

One other thing, if you have the chance to visit Paraguay. They have no café culture. This was the most striking change. People in Misiones and in Paraguay talk with the same accent, share a cultural and ethnic background, and manage their affairs similarly, but as soon as you leave Argentina, forget about bars in every corner where you can order and get an espresso coffee just like that. I learned it the hard way — when, just before heading back to Posadas, I craved for a cup of coffee to keep away the cold and lighten myself up a bit, I walked around for half an hour and then I only found a not-so-good-looking bar where I asked for a coffee and after a long while I got... a cup of coffee, as in what you make for your guests at home. No espresso, no small sugar bags, no bubbly water to finish it. Worked alright for me, but only then it hit me I was no longer home.

Our next stop will be San Ignacio and Santa Ana, the missions.

Back from the north

I came back to Rosario today at around 9 AM. I haven't been able to do much since then — I unpacked my mess, took a long hot shower (more on that soon), unloaded my photos, talked to a couple of friends to catch up, shared lunch with my family. I fear there won't be an end to the blogging once I start telling you about the many different things that I saw during my vacations in Misiones, but I have to start somewhere.

So I'll do more or less what I did in January regarding Mendoza. This post will be only for the general stuff. That would include the following factoids:

• It rained or drizzled a lot most of the time, and it was unusually cold for a subtropical place. Then it also snowed in Buenos Aires. Nevertheless I had a terrific time, mostly, and came out of it without even a common cold.
  
• I took a lot of pictures. Given the aforementioned bad weather, many didn't come out as I expected. There are many places that don't look as good as they are when not lit by unmitigated sunlight.
• I was cold all the time... People in Misiones probably don't need hot showers often.
• I think I'm in love with the city of Oberá.
• I think I'm a luxury travel whore. I enjoyed being pampered by the bus company and would buy their overpriced tickets anytime without protest.
• Misiones' famous red earth gives everything a nice warm touch, but red mud is not nice at all.
• Paraguay doesn't have a café culture.
• You can do a lot with very little money, but not without time. I need longer vacations.
  

Bear with me until I get myself in order, and I'll tell you about my adventures one place at a time... starting tomorrow.

Mosquito Coast

It's coming, finally, as we'd feared. Tropical weather, and now a tropical disease! An epidemic outbreak of dengue fever has infected 16,000+ people in Paraguay (that's more than 1,000 km closer to the Equator than here) and killed hundreds. The first cases started appearing in the northeastern provinces of Argentina and soon Paraguayans coming to Argentina and Argentinians returning from a visit to Paraguay brought it to the central areas. There are more than 126 confirmed cases in the country, half of those in Buenos Aires City and around. In Rosario we have (I think, today) seven suspected cases and one confirmed.

Dengue is a disease similar to a strong flu, which causes headaches, muscular and joint aches, nausea, and fever. It's transmitted by Aedes aegypti, a species of mosquito. A. aegypti is not commonly found on this latitude, but I believe at least three of the cases in Buenos Aires are autoctonous, i.e. were contracted by human-mosquito-human transmission there, and not brought from Paraguay. The confirmed case in Rosario was infected during vacations in Buzios, Brazil (there are thousands of cases in southern Brazil as well).

Dengue has no specific treatment: people simply have to rest and keep drinking fluids, while the fever and the pain are treated with paracetamol-related drugs (paracetamol is known as acetaminophen in the U.S.), since the disease can have a haemorrhagic variant and you can't use the usual non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (paracetamol is also much cheaper — but it can kill your liver). Patients must be isolated in order to prevent transmission, i.e. so that mosquitoes don't bite them and carry the disease elsewhere.

I haven't seen Aedes aegypti here, though I haven't been looking; they say it's noticeably different from the common local mosquitoes. There are a lot of those anyway. You have to consider that the Paraná River has a huge floodplain, full of shallow canals, marshes and other places with lots of vegetation and stagnant water, a perfect breeding ground. We've always had a lot of mosquitoes in the summer, but lately they're appearing in October and lasting until April or even May, and they're big and nasty.

Topping it off, the level of the Paraná is increasing, overflowing its banks. Rosario is not going to get flooded, but its beaches are already mostly gone. The river is forcing people in its islands to abandon them, and carrying aquatic plants that are left to rot in the shores. In Santa Fe City, 200 km north, 230 people have been evacuated, and some are worrying the population (unjustifiedly, according to the government) that there might be a flood like in 2003 (that one was not caused by the Paraná, but by the Salado River, which comes from the northwest of the country).

The mosquitoes are not going away. Pharmacies and supermarkets have noted that mosquito repellents have flown from the isles and the manufacturers are seemingly unable to cope with the demand. You can apply some cream or use an airborne repellent in your room at home, you can close off all openings with physical barriers, but you can't do anything while you're outside. Jogging along the coast the other day, my buddy and I observed that the moment we stopped to stretch, we were attacked by swarms of little bloodthirsty monsters. There are mosquitoes inside my office, and in the bus, and in the street while you're having a cup of coffee in a café.


The municipality has been spreading insecticide around, but it's not enough. Somebody in the radio today proposed we should breed dragonflies to eat the mosquitoes. Dragonflies, which are traditionally considered a sign that a rainstorm is about to come (at least that's what my parents passed down from my grandads), are repulsive when you see them up close, but they don't bite. I saw one flying inside the bus this morning as I went to work. I don't know if they actually feed on mosquitoes, but I know the weather tradition is grounded in reality, as it's been raining on and off for four of five days in a row.

So we have constant rain, mosquitoes and a tropical disease. What's next? Women wearing as little clothing as possible, pineapple drinks in the beach, a world-class carnival? You wish.