Second stop - Paraguay!

Our hostel now has a rooftop terrace! And a pool! Yay! But before getting over-excited, take a look at the following pictures. Some times they indeed say more than a thousand words. That being said, I tried both of the facilities and found them to be very to my satisfaction. hehe

There's a lot of history in Paraguay. The capital - Asuncion - is one of the oldest cities in South America, and the longest continually inhabited area on the continent. It is reachable from the atlantic by ships and this was how it was first founded all the way back in 1537 by Spanish conqueror Juan de Salazar.

Rapidly growing both in population and economy, Paraguay now houses in excess of 6.5M people, where the capital is around the size of Oslo but rises to 2,3M if you count the metro area.

Not being a very touristy destination we didn't plan for more than a two night stop-over in Paraguay, and as far as the capital goes this proved to be more than enough. While other cities take several days to explore, Asuncion was done in around two hours - including museums! Reading up on things it seems there are things we should've seen and done in other parts of the country but that has to be for round two. :-)

I didn't take too many pictures here as there was not really too much to see. One thing that was kind of funny was taking a picture of the presidential palace (after permission was given by one of the many armed guards):

..for then to turn around 180 degrees from the exact same spot where I took the picture, to find this on the other side of the street (no permission needed to shoot pictures this time):

Tomorrow two planes will take us via 3 stops from Asuncion to La Paz in Bolivia - the highest placed Capital of the world at 3600 meters above sea level. The weather forecast is rain and thunderstorms so I reckon it'll be an absolutely awesome experience. :-|

But to all you fellow travellers who are curious to go to Paraguay - do it. The people are friendly and helpful, it's completely safe (at least for men around 6') to walk around, and it is very, VERY cheap. The food is excellent - and again, VERY cheap. I would for sure not lead a healthy lifestyle had I been living here for too long. hehe

Final fun-fact: Paraguay was also the first of all the countries on the continent to gain its independence back in 1811. And quite right, that makes it older than Norway. ;-)