Slippery When Wet

It rained hard in the early hours of the morning. The sound was so great that I almost got up to have a look at it.

After punishing the complimentary breakfast buffet, and emailing my former hotel in Concepcion, I step out onto the street. Filidelfia might be the fifth most significant city in Paraguay, but it´s road network is still simply dirt. Now, that road network is an incredible mud bath, peppered with puddles and flanked by ditches of water. Even the four-by-fours tread gingerly, knowing that if they rip up the road today, they´ll get stuck in it tomorrow. Only the one main road has pavements, and they are badly waterlogged in sections.

My shoes and trousers are already entrenched with mud, so I´m determined to go exploring anyway. Moving on foot is slow, hard work. As I´m digging my heels into the the roadside, I have a bad thought of sliding and falling into the deep wet trench just to my right. Many of the locals are barefoot. Looking at the map, I decide that there´s a little section at the opposite side of town that I want to have a look at. I´ve got plenty of time to burn, so I decide to take the long, slow walk. Halfway there, I´ve lost patience with the road. Passing cars often have limited sympathy, and throw mud up in my direction, immediately followed by my exclaiming "You fucking idiot". The first, and second times I question the reward of mission, I press on, but a third time is too much.

A phone call from my hotel confirms Skullface will not be recovered. I knew there was a good chance I´d loose him at some point, but this isn´t the way it should have happened. At the back of the hotel, I find a pool. As I wander to the bus ticket office, I ask myself the question "Can I swim?" I´m sure I could swim when I was fifteen, and I recall the methodology, so the answer is "Probably." That was the same answer I once gave to the question "Can you ride a bicycle". On that occasion, when it came to learning to ride a moped, the probability transpired to be out of my favour, and I was a useless, dangerous mess for the best part of a morning. This time I enjoy more success. It seems I can do front crawl and breast stroke. My attempt at back stroke sees me veer left, crash into the poolside and sink, but with greater care, even that becomes loosely usable.

It seems the bus doesn´t go from Filidelfia as I presumed. It goes from the immigration office in Mariscal, at 0300, and takes twenty hours to get to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I don´t even want to go to Santa Cruz, and I certainly don´t want to go back to Marsical. In my short time there, I found Mariscal to be a pitiful looking town, without so much as a bank. A fact that meant, I had to sell Vincent Dollars against Euros. I don´t much like the idea of the potential EUR/DEM risk.

After getting four hours of lousy sleep on the cold tiled floor of a spare room of the immigration office, I´m on an unimpressive bus to Santa Cruz.