Argentina!

Hello Again:
First to close the book, maybe, on Paraguay, as we are now in Resistencia, Argentina. I must correct my last entry as the great little spot that we stayed in in Asencion was ¨Pension(e) da Silva¨. Highly recommended in downtown Asencion and with 2 great restaurants right by.
Asencion is a beautiful city with some of the nicest colonial architecture and great old buildings within walking distance of the pension. Also,the houses out in the area of the embassies are quite spectacular. There were a number of galleries and museos in the downtown and most were open except on Sunday. We will always be grateful to Arnaldo Benitez, our Paraguayan friend,for helping us with our itinerary when we dropped in to his office in Cuidad del Este, following the guidebook.
We left for the bus depot at about 10am, hoping to catch the 1pm bus to Resistencia, and as sometimes happens found out that the bus leaves at 3pm. So we hung out at the bus depot watching people and using the internet, etc. When we had arrived back at our room, we has a nice note in our door from Bryan Wattie, a nice man from Perth-Andover, N.B. via Pearson College on Vancouver Island. He addressed it to the ¨lovely NS couple¨and said some very complementary things about the old guy that he had net the previous day. That would be me, surprisingly. We did have a great talk and I learned again that the world is in good hands with people like Bryan coming along to care for it. He and a friend from Pearson (new grads) are in Brazil to work on projects and attend a conference. I am now firmly convinced of the value of programs like Pearson. I must say that being a ¨lovely couple¨is a come down from last year´s trip when we were called ¨the most beautiful couple she had ever seen¨by a young woman, whom we hadn´t even met. Don´t you love young folk with great eyes and good judgement!
Once we got on the bus, it was a short ride to the border. Borders are always an adventure and this was a 2 hour adventure! The immigration folks has their act together as the wickets for Paraguay and Argentina were side-by-side and that part of the process went relatively quickly. Customs was another story, as they had 5 of these big buses to check out and everyone had to get out their bags and put them through a scanner, before re-loading. Long, hot process!
As a result of the time at the border and the 1 hour time change we didn´t get into Resistencia until 11pm, but were able to get a bed and get to sleep.
Yesterday we spent the day wandering Resistencia, looking at sculptures (they are everywhere and this is called the city of sculptures). They also have a convenient Tourist Bureau in the central plaza. Unfortunately many of the museos were not open or difficult to find. We also discovered that they follow the very sensible ¨siesta¨routine here. While a number of stores were closed for vacation, after 12:30pm or so, the city closes until 5pm. It is anazing for us to see the roads empty in the middle of the day, but in the heat, you quickly realize the intelligence of taking it easy in the shade.
In the course of our wandering later (after siesta), we did have one of those magic events which are the high-points of our style of wandering. We found a cultural centre, which was closed at the same time as a young fellow tried the door. We followed him around to a back door and decided to risk following him in. As a result we were treated to a beautiful musical concert, which was obviously a rehearsal for a subsequent event. The voices were absolutely beautiful and, even though I did not understand the obviously emotional spoken parts, I admit to being almodt in tears at the beauty of it all. At these times, you stay against the back wall and hope that the people allow you to stay and understand how much the opportunity means to you.
One last note in comparing Paraguay with Argentina, the cars are different. The traffic in Paraguay had many buses, notocycles, and trucks and not as many cars. But the cars that were there all seemed to be Mercedes. Here there is more of a variety of cars with a variety of ages and mostly smaller. But there are more cars, and many bicycles, and scooters, as opposed to motocycles. Still none of the honking that I remember from Peru and Bolivia.
Enough for now as we should start planning our siesta and the trip to the bus terminal. If things go well, my next post will be from Salta, in NW Argentina as we make our way to the Bolivian border.
Jim