My Days Off

There’s a surprising amount of things to do on my days off here.  On my first day off I went to “Playa del Sol,” a beach on the river that’s about 3km from here.  It wasn’t a particularly hot day, so no one else was at the beach, and it’s not that big, so I didn’t stay very long at all.  On the way back I stopped every so often to take pictures, and when I got back I went to the plaza and sat on a bench a read for a while.  My first day off also happened to be my birthday, and when I went home, Lili and Ramon surprised me with a cake!  After lunch I went to visit my friends that work at the hostel here, and they had also made a cake for me! 

On my day off this week I went with Yami and Pablo from the hostel to a national park nearby.  It was a 7km walk to get there, then we walked up a mountain, down the mountain, and around the mountain, and then 7km home.  At the top of the mountain there was a nice lookout that had a great view of the Rio Parana and Paraguay.  I should also mention that the “paths” up and down the mountain were more like weaving between trees and brush over the same course that apparently a few other people had traveled lately.  We also went swimming in the river, which was nice and refreshing since it was a moderately hot, but gorgeously sunny day. 

There are some people I’ve met several times at the hostel who are living with some artists out by the park, but come to town frequently, so we went to visit them.  Wow! Talk about living off the land!  The artists’ home, which they themselves built, had clay walls about 4 feet high.  Then there was a large gap between the walls and roof, which was made of sheets of plastic (like plastic trash bag material), and the floor was just dirt.  There weren’t doors or separate rooms really, just gaps and openings in the clay walls, making three divisions.  The three people that I knew have been living out there for about 2 months, and each have their own tents, which are spread out in the general area.  The artists have planted a lot of food randomly nearby, but don’t particularly have a garden per se.  They also have about 5 dogs that look absolutely starved; you can see their ribs so clearly and their entire bodies are way tinier that I would have thought possible for survival.  Someone was making some bread, and when some flour dropped on the ground the dogs fought over who got to lick it off the dirt.

There artists were very nice, interesting, generous people, and to a certain extent I think their lifestyle is interesting, but there was one thing in particular that was just too much for me: the bathroom.  There wasn’t one.  Not even like a specified zone.  Now I’ve lived in Africa and I’ve been camping and I’m fine squatting and digging and whatnot, but this was a bit extreme.  Even for pooping they just went out in the woods, and didn’t bury it.  And I guess peeing isn’t a huge deal, but I feel like you could easily dig a small hole and have everyone do it in the same place.  And their 2-year-old son (who didn’t wear diapers and was a little potty-trained but not really) would just pee wherever he was, including on the dirt floor inside their house.  He didn’t wear pants or underwear some of the time, and then the pee would just run down his legs.

But to end on a non-disgusting note, their home and the area around it was decorated with dream catchers and hand-made wind chimes, and there were several hammocks hanging around.  They were also all really good musicians, and had various guitars, drums, and harmonicas, and they played and sang a lot.  They also had handmade benches made from branches and boards they had found, and were in general really creative, resourceful, and crafty with everything in their lives.  It was definitely an interesting experience, to say the least.