Moving Around in Asunción

It sounds silly, but one of the things that impressed me the most until now is how informal everything is on the streets. There are very little signs and many of them (see: zebra paths) have more a decorative function than anything else. People just go their way zig-zaging through the obstacles, and I am talking for both cars and walkers although if you are walking you need to pay special attention to cars coming your side.

Another fun example is public transport. Besides buses and Taxis there is not much, I normally take buses to go to work.

There are many different lines in Asuncion, each with different numbers. The ticket prices vary normally between 2500 and 3300 guarani (40-55 euro cent) depending on which type of bus you have (newer one with air conditioning cost more). Most buses stop working at 8.

You know when you are waiting for the bus already for some minutes and it is late and you feel annoyed with it? If you can't stand it do not come to Paraguay!

Really, until now the public transport system in Asuncion is the only thing that can challenge the entropy of my room.
How bad can it be? You need to go from A to B so you look up which bus goes to B and you take it in A. Simple.

Except. There is no 'look it up', there is no fixed A and if you are so lucky to find a line that goes to B (there are more and quite random) you have a big chance to pass from J, H and Z first so that at the end you don't actually have a clue of where B is until you ask your  kind neighbor,  which tells you that B is far back.

That is actually a very nice thing (not the stepping out too late part): Things as time tables or route description do not exist here but you have quite a big chance to get where you need by asking around. People tend to be very kind and helpful, not just with tourist, there is a kind of orally transmitted collective bus-system knowledge. Personally, I translated this concept in one sentence: If the system does not help people, people have to help each other. The system made me panic more times (there are places in Asuncion where you don't want to get by mistake, especially if you look foreigner, blond and tourist) but had quite some nice encounters through it.

Another nice thing: according to my colleagues the public transport system in Paraguay is one of the worse in Latin America. So it can't get much worse

Anyway, I survived my first week of work moving with the Colectivos (bus) and now that it is weekend I am finally​ taking a break from them :)