Road to the North West

As I anticipated I finally got to visit the famous Dry Chaco. From the 7th to the 11th I have been in the North West of it, at the border with Bolivia. 

It has been a good trip. It took some time to get there. From Asunciòn to the National Park Agripino Enciso (http://www.salvemoslos.com.py/pntae.htm) there are about 650 km, which are 12 hours of car in Paraguay.

The maintenance of the Trans Chaco highway has been quite neglected in the last years. We are not talking about a secondary or tertiary road we speak of the ONLY road. The first 400 km it is well kept, but after Mariscal Estigarriba the state of the road gets so poor that even with a 4x4 jeep it would be quite dangerous to go faster than 50. The last 100 km were not asphalted and our maximal speed was 20, that part was really a big pit with some road around it.

 Apparently the problem on the asphalted road is that heavy vehicle transporting goods and fuel do not respect the indicated maximum weight for which the road was designed. According to Rodrigo, a colleague of Guyra, 5 years ago the state of the road was acceptable. 

Personally I do not mind too much this slower way of moving. You get to see more. 

There is a beautiful transition between the wet and the dry Chaco. Asuncion is situated in the humid Chaco. You leave the city on a bridge crossing this huge course of water, you pass grasslands with palms and cranes, where a seasonal layer of water is hidden by the high grass, and finally the palms disappear and you start seeing the lower, sturdier, closer dry vegetation replacing the more open one. Palo Borrachos, Cactus-trees, Quebracho Blanco, Agarrobo are trees that you encounter a lot here. There are many birds, the ones that you see the most from the road are black vultures and birds of prey, flying around or eating the carcasses of animals on the road. In Europe these would be hedgehogs or frogs, here are little foxes, ant-bears and armadillos. The first day of the trip I got to hold an armadillo that stopped paralyzed in front of the car while crossing the road. That was really one of the cutest things I have seen, although the poor things was paralyzed by fear.

Here and there there sometimes some villages pop out. Mind, we are talking about groups of 10 houses, made out of wooden poles, alluminium plates or bricks,in general quite small and with an open structure. In the interior of Paraguay there are no cities (or even villages for the Western European standards) after Filadelfia that is also the problem with referencing my trip on the blog.