The sorbo rubber pillow that feels like it’s been stuffed with foam boulders, a thin mattress that can’t disguise the wooden slats below. A mosquito net that excludes the bugs and any air that the stratospherically-mounted fan manages to disturb. These buildings suck up the heat throughout the day, building an oven that slowly dissipates in the dark, like a night storage heater. The vague sense of cool only arriving with the crowing cocks and the first glimmer of light in the east. Then the cycle sets off again, a slow but persistent incremental increase in warmth with each day. Yet for the price of three bottles of soda we have a place out of the direct sun. It’s only when The Navigator mentions the room rate that I query her. We’ve passed several ’Motels’ that advertise this same charge, only it’s for a couple of hours. She hesitates for a moment, a small doubt is writ large. "no, I asked for una noche, I know I did. Anyway there’s two beds, no shower, no towels, no car port curtain. We’re alright."
‘Motel’: Paraguayan style, is part of an industry spawned from a lack of privacy offered to most local couples. They’re not what we had assumed on that first day in the country last time, as we blundered in like true gringos, missing the tell-tale signs of eponymous names like: ’Kiss’ or ’Venus y Amour’, or the high privacy walls painted with love hearts. Yet I can’t help but note a steady inflation in the ‘love room’ market; the rates have remained constant, it’s the duration that has dropped. Still, you could use your loyalty card to help defray costs. For the Virgen de Caacupe pilgrimage in early December, householders along the route sell cooked meats and serve cold drinks to the observants, and one motel offers a ‘quarter hour’ rate, which has led to the axiom: ‘they came as two and left as three’.
We, if we want a half-decent night’s sleep will need to seek out the ‘habitacion con aire’; that, or find some elevation. Some 3,000 metres of it. Time to start heading west, heading for the Andean Puna.
The liturgy: ‘de donde son’, ..’esc’…..followed closely by a series of gesticulations, the hand passing mid thigh, the fluttering of fingers and puckering of lips. The kilt and the bagpipe. What a lot Wattie Scott and a visiting Royal have to answer for.
I defend as best as my limited Spanish will allow, ‘it’s our national dress’ and struggling to find an Americas simile. The gaucho’s bombachas, cap or poncho. I’m not convincing. Theirs is sensible every day workwear. It’s hard to get past the image of a man in a skirt. Then we pass through San Miguel.
The man himself is rendered in painted concrete, in an amphitheatre of national flags and ’crown of thorn’ cacti. But more importantly for my case, I now have a further argument to offer. He’s wearing a kilt. A tad mini and in truth the clan tartan is a touch McRoman. But what I take to be significant is the fact that the saint’s namesake pueblo claims to be the Paraguayan ‘Capital of Wool’. Now, ‘la falta Escosesa’ is, if not bought on the Royal Mile or as an Aldi Burn’s night special, made of wool.
Even if he is the patron Saint of British underwear, I find it difficult to decide if he’s wearing the kilt in the approved manner. However I don’t think he can be a true Scot. From his back sprout Archangel wings.
We, if we want a half-decent night’s sleep will need to seek out the ‘habitacion con aire’; that, or find some elevation. Some 3,000 metres of it. Time to start heading west, heading for the Andean Puna.
