Have you ever wondered which UNESCO World Heritage site is the least visited?

When we heard a rumor calling out the Jesuit ruins in the towns of Trinidad and Jesus in Paraguay as the least appreciated UNESCO World Heritage site, we figured they were worth a visit.

The Jesuit communities of Trinidad and Jesus attempted to set an example. The European Jesuits learned Guarani, the local language, and they worked with the local indigenous people with a vision of creating a community focused on education and cooperation. Contrast this to the competing tradition of their contemporaries: keeping the local indigenous Guarani people as slaves.

Unsurprisingly, the Jesuit approach to the Guarani didn't sit so well with colonialists and settlers whose businesses depended upon slave labor. Eventually, the Spanish government expelled the Jesuits in 1767.

The idealists in us hope that the ideas of education, sustainability and community would be more accepted and successful today.

The post Panorama of the Week: The World’s Loneliest UNESCO Site appeared first on Uncornered Market.

Despite all the itinerary changes we made during our Latin American journey, we never took Paraguay off the table. Maybe that’s because we knew virtually nothing about it. We hadn’t met anyone who’d been. That few others traveled there was an indication that we should.

So why visit Paraguay?

To be hugged by a rodent of unusual size (ROUS)?

Never had a country offered so few “must-see” destinations and “must do” activities. But for us, that was part of Paraguay’s allure. It was a land of the unknown, perhaps the misunderstood. A land less visited.

In South America no place puzzles quite like Paraguay. For such a small country, a collection of historical hangnails: a gaping rich-poor gap, a series of crippling wars, and the world’s least visited UNESCO World Heritage site. But Paraguay is different, and it has its moments.

So we offer a metaphor for it: the land of the unconnected dots. Here are just a few.

If prose, culture, background and history about a little-known part of the world is your thing, read on.

Tereré

From the very moment we crossed into Paraguay, we noticed large, macho men carrying thermoses and sipping from metal straws protruding from hollowed gourds full of what looked like green mud. As we observed further, we noticed everyone sporting the same: a thermos, a cup (called a guampa), and a metal straw with a sieve-like spoon at the end (a bombilla).

This is tereré, the Paraguayan national pastime.

And like a briefcase or purse, the design of one’s thermos and guampa – from artisanal leather to rhinestone studded denim – is a point of personal expression.

Tereré herb and root stands dot markets and street corners. Herbs are the secret to great tereré. Vendors not only possess a green thumb to grow them, but they are also experts in traditional herbal medicine. Explain your ailment – from stomach problems to headaches – and an herb vendor will use a mortar and pestle to grind up just the right combination of herbs to ease your pain.

Our favorite tereré experience: at a bus station in Encarnacion hanging out with a healthy cross-section of Paraguayans, young and old, as they waited for their buses to depart. The ice was served up out of thin cylindrical plastic bags, and the water came straight from a tap jutting out of the ground. Bonus: we didn't have to hug the bowl.

Paraguay’s Mennonites

Smack in the middle of nowhere, South America our bus ground to a halt. Enter three men: white skin, tanned, steel-blue eyes, and dressed in denim overalls. They looked like they might have walked out of the background of American Gothic. It was a strange sight to us, but apparently an unexceptional one in Paraguay.

We had read previously of the Mennonite colonies clustered in the Chaco, a chunk of difficult, dry land in western Paraguay. How and why did they end up here?

German, Russian, and Canadian Mennonites moved to the Chaco in the 1920s and 1930s to escape persecution in their home countries. The Paraguayan government gave them great freedom and autonomy, and even some land. But there was a catch: the land was perceived as unsuitable for farming and was virtually uninhabitable. In the beginning, thousands of Mennonites died from disease, but in an ironic twist, the Mennonite colonies are now responsible for a significant portion of the country’s meat and milk production.

Each Mennonite colony also has its own unique relationship with technology and modern conveniences, too. Peter, a German proprietor of a tourism farm outside of Concepcion, shared stories of how some of the more conservative Mennonites buy high-quality tractors to help with harvesting. But their beliefs run deep to hard work, so they don’t want things to go too easily. As soon as their new tractor arrives, they remove the rear wheels and attach a sled.

Locals are swift to take advantage. When their Mennonite neighbors have purchased a tractor, they show up in droves hoping to buy the wheels at cut-rate prices. Yet another win-win.

Asuncion

Paraguay’s upside-down capital city. Some interesting historical building, homes, shops and government offices remain, but the city center feels as if all the people who cared left. The evenings are cricket quiet after workers flee to the outskirts and suburbs.

In perhaps the most perfect illustration of the gap between power and poverty, Paraguay’s Parliament building stands adjacent to a patch of dengue-ridden slums at the river’s edge. It’s odd at first to see politicians going to work in their freshly pressed suits while kids from the slums play just a few meters away. But there’s something vaguely refreshing about politicians having to stare at the poverty their policies and notorious corruption no doubt exacerbate.

The bright spot: Asuncion’s outdoor markets. In Mercado Cuatro – a labyrinth of shops and covered markets – you can find Korean newspapers and restaurants catering to Korean locals. Best of all is the Abasto market on the edge of town, where we were greeted with curious looks and friendly smiles — and surrounded by some of the largest watermelon stacks we had ever seen.

Trinidad and Jesus – A Lonely UNESCO Site

Although the Jesuits established reducciones (townships) throughout southern Paraguay in the 1600s and 1700s, the most famous are the now-UNESCO sites of Trinidad and Jesus outside of Encarnacion. In their day, Trinidad and Jesus were each an exercise in sustainable communal living. In stark contrast to the tradition of keeping the local indigenous Guaranis as slave labor, the Jesuits actually educated and trained them as members of the community.

Unsurprisingly, the Jesuit approach to the Guarani angered and threatened many colonialists and settlers whose businesses depended upon slave labor. Eventually, the Spanish government expelled them in 1767. All that remains now of this progressive slice of history are the skeletons of rubbled settlements, churches and courtyards strewn across a large green field.

The Triple Alliance War

Like all wars, Paraguay’s war with neighboring Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay from 1864 to 1870 falls victim to competing historical narratives as to why it started. The one that prevails: Paraguay started it, the others finished it, and the British played a supporting role.

Some Paraguayans explain it a little bit differently, though: “We were invaded because the others were jealous of our intelligence. We were educating our men in Europe and they were afraid of our independence.”

The circulating story we prefer — perhaps because it provides comic relief to something so tragic — is the one that suggests the war began because of a toothache. As the story goes, Francisco Solano Lopez, Paraguay’s leader, had a toothache that caused such intense pain that it drove him insane — so insane that he decided to declare war on all of his neighbors to the east and south at once.

No matter what the reason for the war’s beginning, it ended with devastating consequences for Paraguay, including the death of up to 90% of the country’s male population. Some Paraguayans believe that the Triple Alliance War continues to cast a shadow on the country’s collective psyche to this day.

On a lighter note, we were also told that Paraguayan men were encouraged to spread their seed in a patriotic duty to repopulate the country. But patriotism has its side effects: every Paraguayan woman expects her husband to cheat; she just doesn’t want to know about it.

Capybaras, Toucans and Frogs

Before you’ve absorbed all that’s heavy about Paraguay, steal off to Granja Roble outside of Concepcion, Paraguay. Spend time with Peter – he’s incredibly knowledgeable about Paraguay and has an interesting story himself of how he got there. Take a boat or some inner tubes down the river, and have him show you these denizens that lurk in an around the oasis he’s created.

But if you visit Peter, you’ll have the opportunity to meet Mimi, the family pet whose identity crisis is served by his female name (the family didn’t realize that he was a male until long after his name had stuck). Mimi is so desperate for a mate that he skulks around and seeks one in the male pig pen out back. But the male pigs are good fighters, for Mimi returned to the kitchen each night with fresh bite wounds across his side and back, likely from pigs who had no interest in being Mimi’s bitch.

Paraguay Photo Essays

• Paraguay, a Best Of Photo Set
• Abasto Market and Street Art in Asuncion
• Frogs, Birds and a Capybara: Concepcion
• Up the Rio Paraguay on the Aquidaban
• Encarnacion, Trinidad, San Ignacio and Ciudad del Este

The post Why Paraguay? appeared first on Uncornered Market.

Have you ever been thankful for an experience that you wouldn't choose to repeat? This was our boat trip experience up the Rio Paraguay in northern Paraguay.

You go somewhere not because it will deliver comfort. You take a trip not because it's going to get you quickly from A to B. You don't do it simply because it's inexpensive. You stand in the face of logic and reason; you deliberately endure an ounce or two of pain.

Your journey's aim: to satisfy your curiosity.

For all that, your experience is rich. You emerge enlightened, just a little bit the wiser.

That's the backstory of our two days on the Rio Paraguay: 36 hours plying the waters on a sagging cargo ferry and 14 hours trundling through the jungle in broken-down buses and flatbed construction trucks.

Although the trip was somewhere on the devil's side of hellish, our Paraguayan journey would have been incomplete without it.

The Rio Paraguay Boat That Could

The Aquidaban was scheduled to depart at 11:00AM; when we arrived at leisure at 9:00AM, we almost turned around.

The ferry's bow was piled high with motorcycles, fuel barrels, fruit crates and cargo workers. The interior – a span of about 70 feet – was now home to over 300 other passengers tucked into every inhabitable notch.

When the boat departed, we were shooed away as our seats quickly transformed into an on-board market stall offering bags of homemade ice, empanadas, and milanesa (fried, breaded meat) sandwiches. One stall over, tubes of local mortadella bologna, plastic dolls with purple hair, bras with huge cups, and bags of random prescription drugs spun from ceiling hooks. It was a market melange.

Life on the ferry settled into a routine. Some people went shopping, sampling goods in the middle aisle. To stay cool, others took multiple showers using the ceiling water spigots in the toilet stalls. The rest just walked the narrow aisles to pass time.

In true Paraguayan fashion, everyone carried his own thermos of tereré, a chilled version of yerba maté served with fresh herbs. Paraguay's intense heat – 100 degrees on the water and well beyond inside the boat – seems a major contributor to this anti-dehydration ritual.

As night fell, most passengers configured themselves uncomfortably on benches and floorboards while others opted for sagging, shredded hammocks tied between salami links and bags of cigarettes. We sampled both options: Audrey slung in a hammock and Dan pretzeled on a bench along with a grandmother and her two granddaughters.

After a restless night, a stunning blood orange sunrise stirred those who could sleep; markets opened and the cycle began anew.

Another twelve hours later, Emanuel, the ice vendor across the aisle, assured us that we were only two hours away from our destination, Vallemi. He must have read the look of exhaustion in our eyes: I’m going to lose it soon.

“How often do you make this trip?” I asked.

“Every week. I leave Concepción on Tuesday. Four days later, I arrive in Bahia Negra. The boat turns around; I arrive in Concepción on Sunday. I re-load the boat on Monday afternoon and begin the trip on Tuesday again.”

And to think, we were filthy and breathless after only a day and a half.

The Bus That Couldn't

The expectation: an easy-going “five-hour bus ride through nice countryside,” as a British traveler had described it just days before.

The delivery: something much worse than the boat and another adventure for which we were unprepared.

Our bus would get stuck in the mud and blow its motor, only to be replaced by a flatbed construction truck that would suffer a flat tire and break down six times as it negotiated mud pits and mosquito clouds across Paraguay's outback, the wet Chaco. An object-lesson in how five hours of pleasure becomes fourteen hours of hell.

The truck was lined with loose wood and cement chunks. The road — if you could call it that — was pitted; mud craters formed easily from the previous night's rain. Each time we drove through a puddle, mud geysers erupted through the gaps in the floor.

Luggage and coolers served as makeshift seats. Bumps and ditches sent the group sailing mid-air. Upon landing, our tailbones were bruised, our bottoms scraped. There was no way to hold fast.

As the day wore on, individual water supplies went from cool to bathwater. But bathwater was better than nothing. When our truck arrived at a river crossing, most other passengers filled their thermoses with mud cocktail. We held off, opting for a more direct path to dehydration rather than the one that stops off at dysentery first.

Twelve hours in, we reached the first sign of civilization: a village snack bar well-stocked with cold drinks. Like zombies, the lot of us descended upon the shopkeeper. One liter of juice and two liters of water later, we began to feel human again.

When we finally arrived in Concepción that night, we were in sad shape. Our clothes were filthy and soaked; exhaustion hung long on our faces. But our journey was not over yet; we had seven more hours on a bus to Paraguay's capital, Asuncion.

But that would be a joyride in comparison.

Do we wish to repeat this journey? No.

Would we do it again without the value of hindsight? You bet.

Why? That's easy. Because you never know until you try.

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