Bus to Asunción

We arrived at the bus terminal in Encarnación at 10:40am, and before we had even made it to the ticket windows a guy asked where we were heading and told us he had a bus right now to Asunción. Before we had agreed, he had written out a ticket for a bus leaving at 11:45. Not exactly “right now” by our definition but we figured it was fine. Louisa showed up 30 minutes later and managed to get on a much nicer bus leaving 15 minutes before us. And that’s when we realized we had made a mistake.

We should have asked around at other bus companies. We should have asked about air conditioning. And we should have asked whether the bus was común or rápido.

It turns out six hours on a not air conditioned Paraguayan bus is pretty unpleasant. While our bus to Encarnación had big open windows, the windows on this bus only opened at every other row and we were, of course, assigned seats in a row without an open window. We were hot and sweaty for 7 hours, made worse because when the bus stopped at little stops along the route, there was no airflow at all.

The común buses stop at tons of local stops and they also sell more tickets than there are seats. We are pretty sure if you take a long-haul ride, you will get a seat, but it’s worth confirming that. On both ends of our journey there were people standing in the aisles of the bus for hours.

We, at least had seats, but Eric’s seat wouldn’t latch in the reclined position. If he reclined, he was laying in the lap of the person behind him. And if he didn’t recline, the seat back was tilted forward slightly. When the person in front reclined his seat, Eric looked like a sandwich between two slices of chair bread. He worked valiantly on his laptop while Jess took intermittent sweaty naps. We joked he looked a bit like a T-Rex.

When we finally arrived in Asunción, we found the line 38 bus Louisa had told us went to our hostel. After a very zippy bus ride, we arrived at the hostel to find Louisa relaxing comfortably having arrived a few hours before us after a very pleasant air-conditioned ride that cost only a few dollars more. Next time, we will know to ask lots of questions about the bus before we buy a ticket.