Greetings from Paraguay's capital city of Asuncion. I will shortly be
starting my bike trip, today all I did was ride around Asuncion a bit.
More on that shortly.
Being the cheapskate that I am, I am
always on the lookout for the cheapest airline tickets possible. That
led me on this trip, for the first time, to fly COPA Airlines out of
Tijuana and not United or someone else, out of Los Angeles. I took my
bike to the airport Thursday night, and hopped on the midnight
AeroMexico flight to Mexico City, where I arrived at 5AM (three hours
later, taking into account time zones) Friday morning. AeroMexico
codeshares with Copa, and this proved cool, because COPA charges $100 to
ship a bicycle, but AeroMexico only charges 789 Pesos, about $57US. I
happily paid the fee to AeroMexico. Arriving in Mexico City, I sat
around for four hours until 9AM, which was just long enough to get into a
dispute with the less than helpful management in a restuarant where I
ate breakfast over a very small corner of a 500 Peso note that was
ripped off. (Banco de Mexico runs adds on the radio saying that as long
as a note is 51% there, it is valid.) They wouldn't accept it, so I
said fine, no tip for you. Then I went and spent the 500 note buying a
phone card, and the cashier at 7-11 did not even look at the corner.
What fun...
At 9AM, I got on a COPA flight to Panama City (COPA
is based out of Panama, and no matter where you are flying on them, you
WILL be visiting Panama City.) arriving there another three hours later
in a torrential rainstorm. The approach to the airport was
interesting, I had a window seat and looking out the window could see
literally hundreds of freighters waiting in line to get into the Panama
Canal. My paternal great grandfather was an engineer who worked on the
Canal, and my grandmother spent many years of her childhood living in
what was then the Canal Zone.
From Panama, it was on to another
COPA flight to Asuncion. Takeoff in the pouring rain was fun, but
uneventful. This was a six hour flight, arriving at Asuncion about 11
20 PM local time. Asuncion is two hours ahead of Eastern time and five
hours ahead of Pacific time. By a great miracle, both my bike and my
saddlebags actually arrived with me (unlike two years ago), so a went
got my passport stamped (after convincing the customs guy that my Visa
really was for "multiple entries", and not single entry.) and then
visited an ATM machine where I helped myself to a million and a half
Guaranies, which is about $350 US at a rate of 4,700 to the dollar. I
immediately mentally kicked myself for not taking out a million 480,
because I found myself in possession of fifteen 100,000 Guaranie notes,
and worried about change. Fortunately, the cabbie who took me to my
hotel had change. I got to my room and fell asleep until noon today.
Upon
waking up, I wandered a couple blocks to a very useful tourism office
where I aquired several useful maps, and found out to my great regret
that the wood burning steam locomotive pulled trains no longer run the
20 mile Sunday tourist train from Asuncion to Aregua. I had REALLY
wanted to go on that train, and, in fact, that is why I scheduled myself
to come in over the weekend. Twas not to be, however.
I then
returned to the hotel, assembled my bike, and headed out to tour
Asuncion. I had not been able to do this in 2012, thanks to LAN
airlines losing my bicycle for three days, so this was my first time
biking the city. I found several very pretty parks, and discovered that
they close the coastal boulevard (Avenida Costanera) to motor traffic
on weekends, leaving a nice 2 and a half mile long road for cyclists to
ride on. I did not take any pictures today, because I forgot to bring
my camera, but I will tomorrow, and will upload them to the blog then.
Now it is off to find dinner.
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