Vacation Post and Pictures

This is a map of Paraguay. Sorry, it's small... We live in a town called Filadelfia. Asunción is the capital city and we can usually do the 475 km in about 5 hours with potty break included. Our destination was Ayolas, another 320 km down south of Asunción.

The Yacyretá Dam or Hydroelectric Power Plant is located near this town. And this is what my Dad really wanted to see - so we took them. The first part of our trip we were in seperate cars, and then for our trips inland, we just took our SUV.

I love when trips begin this way! Our girls were in Grampa's truck and the boys slept halfway for about two and a half hours! What a blessing!

It rained quite a bit while driving down to Asunción, but the sunrise - spectacular, as always!

About 40 km east of Asunción is an Ostrich farm. We see alot of  ostriches in the Chaco (northern part of Paraguay) but these are African Ostriches, being bred and raised here. They are a LOT bigger than our native ostriches.

My girls took many sky pictures!

Besides breeding the ostriches for feathers, meat and eggs, they also sell the leather and make beautiful pieces of art from eggs and even pieces of egg (jewlery). Next to the silluete egg theres an egg on a stand that will be etched and then made into a lamp

Here's my pedicure at the beach!

My kiddos! They love the water. I wish we had more of it up here! Of course this picture was taken before anyone fell in!

Mom and Dad

  

This was taken at the Taiwanese Gardens. (Expo Flora) Just seeing all this green is like an oasis for us drought weary souls. A little background - northern Paraguay - called the Chaco, is often plagued by drought. So we love rain - any day any time. The Southeastern region has a  more tropical climate and is lush and green. Just what we needed to see.





These Mango were huge! And cheap. You could get 5 for one dollar! We didn't get any here because my daughter is allergic to them and we didn't want them in the car with us the whole way. We did buy some on the way back though.

This beach is at the Tebicuary River. It's about halfway to Ayolas.

Finally in Ayolas! This is our hotel. It's pretty old and when we stayed here last year it was pretty run down. They did a bunch of renovations - including the plumbing in our room (we stayed in the same room!)

We're actually on our way back up from the river here. It's a really steep bank that goes down right in front of the hotel.

A branch off of the Parana River. The river itself is very wide and actually has many islands thoughout.

What else would we eat here but barbequed fish? Yummmmm

The next three pictures are of Yacyretá - Our pictures didn't turn out very well because of the rain, so these are borrowed from wikipedia!

 

We did have a really good time though. We played...

We slept...

And we laughed! Especially when we saw this old goat!

Now that we're back home I´m craving some routine in my life.

I finally got the boys room totally cleaned up - toys sorted, curtains washed and rehung, clothes sorted and I even rearranged the furniture. I've been going through it slowly, but I think what works better for me is to just finish it already . So I did. I feel much better now. Next up is the girls room, and when everyone (except Joseph) is in school next week, my room! Oh and I didn't actually finish painting the border in the boys room yet, so that gets done when the kids are in school, too!

Have a great week!

Casey