Longest trip ever....well it felt like it

Hey ya'll. Sorry I have been so bad about writing. I feel like my daily life has become so regular that things arn't so "interesting" any more. Even though I do question daily if the things I am doing would have been considered "normal" about 5 months ago, they are completly normal now.

So Danielle, Johnathan and I decided to take the boat from Concepcion down to Asuncion on the Rio Paraguay. The boat, so I hear typically takes around 18-24 hours. Both Daniell and Johnathan have tried to take the boat in the past, but things never really worked out. For Johnathan the boat left at 3:30 am when usually it is supposed to leave around 5 am. So we all decided to go. Danielle and I left our site, she is the volunteer really really close to me, on Saturday at 5 pm. We got into Concepcion at around 6:30 pm, went to Johnathans house then grocery shopping, we needed supplies for the trip. We had sent his host parents on a mission down to the port to ask around what time the boat would be coming in. His host parents talked to some people and said that the boat wouldn't be getting in until around 11 am so we didn't need to get down to the dock really really. Which sounded weird because the boat usually leaves around 5 am. So we stayed up pretty late and didn't prep completly because we were planning on doing it in the am. Well at 5:30 Johnathan's parents get a call that the boat will be at the dock in one hour. So we rush, get stuff ready, his family goes ahead of us on their moto. While walking we get a call that the boat is there and we need to hurry they are holding the boat. So we run. It is hot. We get there...no boat. It was a different boat that his parents thought was the boat that goes to Asuncion. So we sit and waited until 11 am for the boat to get into the dock. In the meantime danielle and I took a little row boat over to the island of Chaco i ( the i sounds like e, and in guarani i means little) The boat arrived, we got on , and waited another hour for them to fix the rudder, it apparently wasn't working too great. At about 12:30 on sunday we were on our way. At 2:00 pm the boat broke down, Danielle and I swam while waiting, then we drank some Cana, the local whisky. We sat there for about an hour and a half then it was fixed and we were on our way again. Then at about 1:00 am the boat broke down again. And we sat in the same place from 1:00 am until 7:00 am. Luckely there were hamacks to sleep in, and it wasnt too hot during the night. At 7:30 am they told us the boat was broken, they wern't sure if the back up boat would be coming before or after lunch, and that if we stayed on the boat we would be getting in really late at night, monday. We were close enough to a port town that the Paraguayan navy came and picked us up on a little motor boat and dropped us off on shore in a place I think called Rosario. At 9:30 am a bus going to Asuncion showed up. We had no idea where we were or how long the bus ride would take. Well 3 hours later we got to a paved road, the bus was full and it was about 100 degrees. Then once on the paved road it was about 3 more hours to Asuncion.

All in all it was an interesting trip. The workers on the boat were great, and loved that Danielle spoke practically perfect Guarani, and we had a good time with the hamacks and cana. Maybe I'll take the boat another time, but not anytime soon, being to took pracitally two days to get here, and it usually takes 8 hrs.

Now I am in Asuncion, for about 2 days then back up to 25 de Abril. Where the Cooperative has exported more than 50,000 kilos of Sandia. Oh and about the last blog, the sandia are definatly lifted more than the number of times I wrote. All of the sandia that don't get exported are lifted at least 3 or 4 more times before sold. Good thing its delicious, I don't mind lifting it, as long as I get to eat it 8 or more times a day!!!!!!

Oh its getting really HOT!