Night Prowler

I'm out in one of Asuncion's satellite towns, on the advice of the hostel's guidebook. After forty-five minutes of searching and asking after a museum that transpires to be in the second of the two towns I'm visiting today, I'm concluding that there's nothing here to see. It's meant to be famous for guitars, harps and jewellery, but my walk along and around the main highstreet turns up none of them.

I stop for an ice cream to at least partially validate my time and bus ticket. I ask the two young girls and their mother where these famous guitars are meant to be. I'm given the name of a shop and pointed in the direction of an arbitrary street corner where bus number twenty would stop. I'm not interested enough in a guitar shop to get on a bus, but for some reason, I don't want the ice cream girls to see me walk away after taking instruction. Whilst I'm waiting, I can see them talking to a guy who's pulled up outside the shop on a motorbike. He spins around, pulls up by me and asks where I'm going. 

Now I'm on the back of a motorbike, speeding along some questionable roads. I'm trying to act casual, with both hands behind me, holding onto the back of the seat, but I've got my eyes on incoming potholes, hoping my amigo, Alberto, has the good sense to go around them. Neither of us has so much as a helmet, and I'm in shorts - not that trousers would keep the road from sanding my knees to the bone in a fall. Alberto is making conversation as we're going, but I'm not in the mood to exert the necessary focus to back and forth right now. I recall my UK basic motorbike training. The instructor, Nem, spent some time warning the group of the inevitable accident we would each have. I most specifically remember his story of working in a garage, and being asked by his boss to check the clutch on a crashed bike. The clutch worked fine, but his boss and the rest of the guys had a good laugh as Nem noticed the finger of the dead rider hanging from it. I gladly hop off, but heartily thank Alberto. 

After exchanging instruments with the shop keeper and noodling around with a harp, I head off to the next town, Capiata. The museum I was looking for is the Museo Mitologico. In the right town, I find it with ease, but it's distinctly closed. It's in little more than a house, so I knock next door. There's no doorbells in Paraguay. I'm given instruction to stand outside the side door of the museum and clap my hands. It feels as ridiculous as it sounds, but it does get me in. The museum proudly features several somewhat amateurishly built models of creatures from Paraguyan myth. As a favourite, I would have to choose Pombero. I understand that he mostly comes out at night, mostly, and is prone to mischevious deeds, but is a nice enough guy, once you get to know him. He reminds me of me. He's narrowly ahead of Yasyyatere, who is the god of napping, and is more prone to stealing children who do not nap, before having their eyes out and leaving them to live feral in the forest. Elsewhere, in the two room museum, I'm pretty sure I've found the Arc of the Covenant.