VIDEO about this entry
First breath of Paraguayan air - Saturday morning, 10am . With my huge 85 litre pack on my back and the smaller 40 litre bad-boy on my chest, I waddled as fast as I could to wave down the small dusty bus which was leaving the rank. They stopped. I squeezed through the doorway as the bus started moving again. I asked, "Encarnacion airport?" - "si, si", said the driver. I turned into the isle of the passenger cabin - all the seats full - I removed the large pack off of my back - with great effort not to knock out the people staring at me in the isle seats - and lifted the 26kg's above my head to walk to the back of the bus. The only space available was in the toilet, so I dropped the bags in there and took my seat on the toilet. 20 minutes later the isle of the bus had also filled with standing people that had boarded along the way. Suddenly the bus stops, "aeropuerto!", a shout comes from the front. I jumped up, put the small 9kg pack on my back and hugged the larger one to my front. "okay people, you'll need to disembark so that I can get through", I yelled to the dozens standing in the isle . Nobody moved. The bus started revving, the toilet window slid open with a smack, a young boy on the outside appeared and called urgently for me to pass my bags through the window. I didn't hesitate. Within seconds both bags were squeezed through the window, almost squashing the poor boy as they fell. "okay, now you!", he screamed just as the bus started moving again, which prompted him run back into the bus - off he went. I was quick - "mother of moses" I thought as I gripped something above the window and thrust myself legs first through the window of the moving bus and landed neatly on my feet in the gravel beside the highway. 

I had received an email two days earlier from Mirian Raatz, the managing director of Yerba Mate Pajarito instructing that I should be at this small airport. There was no airport in sight where they had dropped me, but a small sign directed me 3.5 km down an adjacent road. When I finally arrived there was nobody there except for one man who told me that there had been no aeroplanes that had landed that day, nor were they expecting any to land . He was very kind and helpful, prepared me a mate in typical Paraguayan style with camomille and estevia and gave me a place to rest for my aching back. He knew about the family who owned the Pajarito brand. "A few of the men in the family are pilots", he said. Some phone calls later and I was on the line with Mirian's son who told me that his mom's flight had been delayed due to bad weather and that they would arrive around 16:30. With a deep sense of relief I relaxed until they arrived.

It was in neat little 6 seater Beechcraft Baron aeroplane piloted by Mirian's husband, Arnulfo. I walked out onto the runway to meet them."Jump in", said Arnulfo. "hurry, it's not long before dark" he urged. The last thing I was expecting that day, was to be picked up by a private plane to be taken into the Praguayan yerba mate country. Overcome with surprise, all my aches and pains disappeared as we took off and I could only smile and shed a few tears as we flew between the low hanging clouds and the yerba mate plantations of Southern Paraguay . We landed on a grass landing strip near Bella Vista, the region where their organic yerba mate grows in the hill-top forests. With that, I had made it to the historical yerba mate region where I would spend the following 3 weeks studying Yerba Mate Pajarito's multi-award winning systems for making high quality yerba mate.