San Rafael

Last week brought a traveller from a distant and dream-like land... Thea, constant of my Cambridge schooldays and now a Real Grown-Up with a Real Job in the Real World zone of Oxford.

We found each other at the bus terminal in Encarnación (about two and a half hours from Santa Maria) and took rather more rickety bus for three hours to Ynambu, to visit the San Rafael nature reserve. We were supposed to be picked up there and taken the last 10km to where we would be staying, but as it was RAINING, our hosts assumed we weren't coming, didn't appear and were unreachable by telephone. An auspicious start. We were saved by serendipitous circumstance: a Paraguayan friend of mine happens to have a brother who lives in this specific tiny and remote village, whom I miraculously managed to identify based on the information that he was bald and looked a bit like my friend - the population is small enough that I think most of it walked across the square in the couple of hours we were sat there waiting. His neighbour ferried us to our destination, the sun came out and all was well.

By the lake, which was created by the Swiss owner to generate hydroelectricity. He also built a small plane for conservation reconnaissance missions. As you do.

The reserve is dedicated to the conservation of part of the remaining 7% of the South American Atlantic Forest, a kind of temperate rainforest. We saw some colourful birds, including toucans, and some monkeys in the distance. Thea was excited by armadillo holes (in Guarani tatukua, not to be confused with tatakua - points to anyone who remembers what that is), but the beasts themselves did not show themselves, alas. The plants and trees were also interesting, even to the untrained eye (me).

Thea investigates a strangler fig.

We swam in the lake. Apparently no-one has attempted this in July before (the depths of winter) but after the initial plunge it was quite a pleasant temperature!