Eileen in 'Streams and Swamps'

In Paraguay we were heading for my friend Eileen’s house in a village called Arroyos y Esteros, or Streams and Swamps, around an hour from Asunción. After spending a night in a hotel in Asunción having arrived too late to get to Eileen’s, we set off the next morning on a local bus. It was nice to have street sellers back on the buses offering fruit and freshly baked snacks. We find this a very positive addition to journeys and we indulged in trying a deliciously light and fluffy milk muffin with chocolate chips and a chipa, which we’ll explain more about on a food entry. By the time we reached Arroyos y Esteros, with lots of stops to pick up people heavily laden with boxes, bags and cartons of eggs, the bus was packed. It seems there is no capacity limit on buses but everyone takes this with good humour and shuffles along a bit.

Eileen has recently started working for organic Fairtrade sugar cooperative, Manduvira. We found her in the office in the centre of the village. We met lots of people there who were all very friendly. Arroyos y Esteros is a large, rural village set around a big, central square where everyone seems to know one another. The weather was beautiful while we were here – the days were fresh with clear blue skies and sunshine casting a gorgeous light on red dusty tracks and fields full of sugar cane. It was a very relaxing place to visit and we felt lucky to have the chance to do so, because we wouldn’t have done had Eileen not been here.On our first evening, open-air bingo in the square was on, complete with a large sound system and background disco music. We sat on the steps of the church with the rest of the village and attempted to win a blanket, a fan and a mobile phone. It turned out there were three games of bingo, but we thought there was only one and crossed off all 9 of our cards between the 3 of us in the first game, which was a bit hectic. We still failed to win anything and as it was pretty chilly, we retired to the local shop/restaurant/off-licence for chocolate capitán, which is hot chocolate with sugar cane spirit. This really hit the spot and warmed us up. The bingo finished around 11 and Eileen had a call to say that her friends were still in the square, drinking and singing. We went back out and joined them with a few beers. Although they spoke barely a word of English, they had mastered a few songs very impressively, including Queen, I’ve got to break free, Eric Clapton, Knocking on Heaven’s Door and Guns ‘n’ Roses, Sweet Child of Mine. I think they were a little disappointed that we didn’t know all the words, but we did our best and it felt like good, old fashioned fun of the sort that you are told by your grandparents used to happen in your local village before the arrival of the youth of today.

Eileen has just moved into a lovely, little house. The next day, we went to the square for a procession of school kids to commemorate the Chaco War from 1932-1935 when Bolivia invaded the north of Paraguay. After that we ate porridge, picked grapefruits in Eileen's garden and made a yummy juiceThen we went for a lovely wander along dusty red tracks in the afternoon sunshine, and cooked shepherd’s pie and apple and pear crumble with custard in the evening for Eileen’s friends. We didn’t find any streams or swamps but we did meet lots of nice people and got a bit more of a feel for rural Paraguay, which seems a good place to be. If we find something similar in Nicaragua we’ll be very happy.