I’m still just relaxing and strolling around Foz, doing very little.

I’m not sure if it’s nationwide but I’ve noticed at least where I am Brazilians really seem to like caffeine. There are stores and booths everywhere that sell all kinds of coffees and teas and yerba mate based drinks as well as so many different guarana based sodas.

Guarana is a unique-tasting, caffeine-loaded berry that grows on a local species of palm tree here in Brazil.

So, my one and only plan for today is to grab a bunch of guarana sodas and find the best one.

THE CONTENDERS: Kuat Guarana, Guarana Antarctica, Fanta Guarana.

NOSE:

Kuat – Quite a strong, berry and vanilla smell, nice.

Antarctica – Almost zero scent, just a bit of a sweet berry smell.

Fanta – Something of a blend of the other two, very pleasant.

WINNER: Fanta

TASTE:

Kuat – Cream soda, it tastes like cream soda, more than guarana or any sort of berry taste, not bad but seems not quite right.

Antarctica – Oooooh, niiiice. Subtle, laid back, a lovely interpretation of guarana’s hard to describe berry characteristics. Refreshing and easily the best.

Fanta – Hey what, no. No. Weird artificial syrup sorta taste, hmmmm, nope.

WINNER: Antarctica

Seriously, I slept until 2pm today, drinking soda will be my greatest achievement today.

After two months of going pretty hard day after day travelling I realized I needed a break, so I booked a week in Foz, Brazil, a small, sleepy border town of about 250,000 people that straddles Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. I have no plans, I am doing nothing. Just sleeping a lot, healing, washing clothes, wandering around, experiencing a bit of Brazil for the first time.

Walked across the Paraguay-Brazil border at 6am, the amount of cars and people and motorcycles crossing to head to jobs in Brazil was astounding. I only got this short video cuz the sound of me freaking at the end of the clip was due to border security angrily yelling at me to not film the border.

Three times this trip people have asked me the same question, kind of out of the blue, apparently it’s a thing:

“Do people in Canada and the United States call this fruit ‘passionfruit’?”

And I, of course, say “Yes”, because that is a passionfruit. And then I get energetically corrected. Apparently the fruit above is NOT passionfruit, it is granadilla, and real passionfruit is bigger, yellower, and very sour:

I’ve been eating tons of whatever passionfruits I can find in every country. I don’t care what you call what, the big yellow one kinda sucks. It’s sooooo sour, like approaching lemon sour. I’ve heard people put a little sugar on it but give me the little sweet one anyday, whatever you want to call it.

The big sour one does get used a lot here for sour beers though, and it works stunningly well for it, I keep trying these sorta sour radler beers that use passionfruit for the sourness, all have been shockingly good.

There is also the purple version of the yellow passionfruit, which is less sour and stronger tasting but I have barely seen it in markets anywhere.

I had no idea what to expect when landing in Asunción. I knew it was an old city, decades older than the founding of any European colonial city in Canada or the US. I learned it predates the founding of Quebec City by 60 years, when you look at where Asunción is on a map that fact becomes even more surprising. The city was also founded pretty much entirely on false pretenses, Spain thought Paraguay was full of gold, silver and gems, at some point after many missions through the country they realized Paraguay had nothing of value to Spain at all. To this day Paraguay has been severely handicapped by having no minerals, no metals, no precious resources, no oil, and no gas.

When I first arrived in Paraguay’s capital it was a ghost town and a huge number of the buildings I saw were boarded up and abandoned, so I made certain assumptions based on what I saw. There’s 4,000,000 people here but I couldn’t seem to find more than 20-30 of them.

Eventually I saw more of the city and also realized things appeared a ghost town because the capital pretty much shuts down for a week or two at Easter.

Asunción is definitely still the most beat up capital city I’ve been too, I’m certainly not going out alone at night, but I’m happy I got to see a more vibrant side of it over time. On average I found Paraguayans to be the friendliest people I’ve met this trip, really an enjoyable time.

I also developed an appreciation for the unique architecture of the capital, I don’t know if it has a name, I know nothing about architecture, I just liked how strange and unique the buildings are, I’ve never seen a collection of unique styles anything like this anywhere else in the world, like some sort of tropical Blade Runner-esque city.

Some countries are coffee countries, some countries are tea countries, Paraguay is neither.

Like, for real it is neither, the only international coffee chain that operates in Paraguay is The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, who have one location in Asuncion. I went there, it was hot, dark and silent, they literally had to power up the espresso machines to make my cappuccino. Paraguay is definitely not a coffee or tea country.

Paraguay is a tereré country.

Tereré is basically an iced caffeinated beverage made from yerba mate leaves along with various other herbs such as lemon balm, sarsaparilla, crocus saffron, mint, etc.

When the United Nations added Paraguayan tereré culture to their list of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity they found 90% of Paraguayans consume tereré regularly.

Seemingly everyone in Paraguay drinks tereré all day long. How do I know? Because everyone carries their tereré kit with them all day. A container of cold water and ice, called a termo, a drinking vessel, called a guampa and a filter straw, called a bombilla.

I was excited to try this beverage, so I looked on every restaurant menu everywhere I went, I never saw it once. Turns out it’s not really sold commercially because everyone leaves home in the morning already equipped.

I looked for prepared tereré to purchase every day I was in Paraguay and by my last day had given up hope. As I waited for my bus that would take me to the Paraguay/Brazil border I heard a woman calling out “Mate! Tereré! Mate! Tereré!” from the lower level of the bus station. Even though I knew the tereré would be made with water I was very much not supposed to consume I decided it was worth the risk and pulled up a stool to her stand.

I told her in my terrible Spanish that I had never had tereré before, she looked skeptical but showed me how it works. She opened a cooler, took out a cylinder of ice that made from water infused with the various herbs (other than the yerba mate itself), added the ice to a pitcher of cold water (the termo), filled a cup (the guampa) to the brim with yerba mate leaves, and handed me a metal straw with a built in filter (the bombilla). She poured some water into my cup and indicated that I am to drink it immediately, no steeping, and to then repeat, forever.

I do so. It doesn’t taste bad, it’s quite mild, a bit like green tea and lawn clippings, with a herbal kick.

I sat at the bus station tereré stand nursing my termo of ice water until I’d sucked all the flavour from the experience, paid her $5,000 guarani (about $1.50) and felt happy and calm.

Everyone carrying their tereré kit

“and she’ll look right through you, with just one eye”

Lyle Lovett

I met this lady on the street in Concepción, I call her Fiona. One ear scratch and she followed me for two blocks and then ran off, about two hours later I stepped into an empanada shop and who was there to greet me?

I saw Fiona the next morning too, waiting at my motel, we went for breakfast to the same empanada shop.

I spent four days out in the emptiness here, no internet, no cell reception, no people, I ate gas station cookies and I slept in the back of the truck. I don’t know how to write about it. It was the most disconnected I’ve felt in years, I just walked and walked and walked, and drove and drove and drove, seeing basically zero other people. Taking in the Chaco’s foreboding loneliness. I don’t think I will try to relate it here, it was just like one of those solo things that leaves you with no way to describe them.