Bus to San Francisco

Some of the McKissicks and the Dirks in San Francisco

Arrived in San Francisco (Paraguay) on Monday early afternoon after a not-as-bad-as-anticipated bus journey.  It was relatively straight-forward from Asuncion save for the Paraguayan dude in the seat in front of me who reclined his chair to full-on sleep mode less than 1 minute into the 6 hour journey leaving me with about half as much space as everybody else on the bus.  As he and I were sharing the same personal space I sometimes rested a hand or arm over the back of his seat to overcome the fearful bus cramp, only then in his sleep he would move around and then hold my hand momentarily until he came to his senses.  He never learned.

The bus was high tech: it had those gizmo panels set above each seat with the panel helpfully missing air conditioning blowers.  The panel had the round indent as if to say This is where you are meant to find relief, but no!  Haha!  The relief was found through large windows which had curtains that needed to be drawn depending on which side of the bus was getting melted by the sun.

The journey was nice except for the constant flooding with salespeople out to sell clearly illegal DVDs, bread, newspapers and Coca-Cola (some of the bottles of which were quite clearly fake as the liquid wasn’t nearly dark brown/black enough, it merely resembled dirtier-than-usual water).  I’d have asked for some but I don’t know Spanish units yet (as they are all the thousands).  At major stops such as Villarrica the bus would stop for 20 minutes in the baking sun whilst we could determine the good from the bad.

I was expecting a dirt road most of the way, but that only started from around Caazapa where the bus turned off one tarmac road down some back road and the route just turned to red dust.  Despite it not being many miles from there to San Francisco it was rendered a slog due to the rough road that moved and dropped wherever the rain water had wanted to run in the recent past (I am yet to witness rain here despite the forecast constantly warning of it).  The number of passengers dwindled and the bus began to stop at crossroads with no obviously local habitations.  We crossed a sort of prairie with the occasional tree or a sudden collection of woods and houses, and reached a series of wooden bridges that spanned small, usually dried-up rivers.  The bus would tread carefully onto them, and when sure it was either safe or ready to collapse, the driver hit the gas and all the wooden planks would bounce and rattle like a xylophone.

I arrived in San Fransisco and the bus attendant who had spoken Spanish in Asuncion now spoke to me in Guarani (a language I can’t even pronounce the name of).  Climbing out I felt really self-conscious as it was just a collection of wooden shacks and some cement square shops set amongst trees in the reddish dusty street as there I stood like a total tourist with this stupid big shiny black case and courier bag.  Dr. McKissick was supposed to be meeting me there but there was nobody, well, nobody except a bunch of cowboy-hatted locals sitting on their porches and shop entrances sipping terere, eyeing me up and down like they did to the newbie who entered the saloon for the first time in those John Wayne movies.  The Doc turned up after 2 extremely long minutes.  He greeted me with a smile and took me back to his house a couple of ‘blocks’ away and introduced me to his family.

I’m staying with them for a week before they go off to Bolivia, so I have to come back at some point.  Also, Danielle, another short-termer who I met at my first church service is coming here this week.

The McKissicks have 6 children, 2 dogs, about 15 chickens, several ducks with chicks, a bird chick with a broken wing, 2 toads, 2 or 3 rabbits (one which lives in the chicken house happily, and one which just gave birth to 2 babies).  They do medical mission work and a bunch of other stuff, and they are really part of the community.  I’m here to record their work to make 2 films.

I’d like to post a lot of pictures, but they have slower-than-dial-up speeds here so I’m only going with one and then post more from Asuncion on Sunday night.