Monumento Natural Cerro Koi

For a few months now I've been bugging a friend to take me out to see something she mentioned in passing. Last weekend our schedules finally worked out and we managed to spend a day in Aregua, a lake side town which is know for its pottery and the Strawberry Festival. However neither of those two things were what interested me this trip. No, I was sitting up in anticipation in the back of her off road vehicle as we bumped up the uneven road, following a policeman on his motorcycle (just an extra measure of safety), to the hillside of Cerro Koi (which means two hills in Guarani). Despite everything she had told me I didn't really know what to expect. I just knew that I was going to see an extremely rare geological formation which only exists in three parts of the world (Paraguay, Canada and South Africa). How to put it? After over over an hour on the internet I still can't give you a proper name for the formation, nor could I tell you where in those other two countries the formation is found. There is a definite lack of information out there. So, instead, you'll be stuck with what I learned there, but mind you, I don't have any way of substantiating what was told to me. The natural monument is composed of two hills (hence the name) which are extinct volcanoes. As the lava was cooling just the right conditions were met to produce a sandstone formation of what looks like tiered hexagonally shaped rods all piled on top of each other. The hill that we had access to by foot, was significantly mined. In fact the guard told us that originally pieces of the sandstone were broken off and used to cobblestone the streets in Asunción and Luque. I am a bit confused because I had assumed that the rods would be going up and down, however they were laying on their side. Did the volcano fall over? Or is this the natural lay? We couldn't get close enough to see the rods in the second hill so I don't know if they went a different way. However I was able to get close enough to the exposed hillside to appreciate the precise formations that nature is able to create! After marveling at the seemingly impossible formation we then followed the guard up and around to the top of part of the hill. A great chance to get a feel for just how large Lake Ypacarai is and to look over the countryside around Aregua.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about going to see this geo-morphological phenomenon is that so few people seem to know about despite it being declared a protected area in 1993. In fact when I went to school on Monday people were curious as to where I had gone to see such a different sight. I find it sad that people who are interested in exploring a country don't know about, and have trouble finding out about, things that are only an hour away. For those of you interested, the entrance to the Monumento Natural Cerro Koi is marked by an sign to your right about 1 km out of Aregua on the branch road to Capiatá. It is well worth a trip to check out!

Strawberry Festival

It is strawberry season here in Paraguay, obviously as there are people selling strawberries on all the major street corners. That also means that it is time for the Strawberry Festival in Aregua, about 30 minutes outside of the city. Saturday we decided to take a little trip out to celebrate the strawberry season and see where the berries are grown that end up in our kitchen. I have to admit I expected a bit more out of the festival, but I’m willing to mark it down to showing up so late – almost 4:00. Perhaps there would have been more going on if we had gotten there in the middle of the day. Perhaps not though, as the festival seems to go on until the end of strawberry season, so maybe that can’t really do much more than what I saw for a month. The Aregua strawberry festival consisted of approximately 20 tents lined up on the side of road. Each tent seemed to belong to one family or grower and contained baskets of strawberries, whatever strawberry products they produced (jams, jellies, liquor, juice) as well as a selection of sweets (strawberry shortcake, strawberry alphahores, strawberry frozen icicle pops, strawberries and cream in a cup…). I’m sure you get the picture. I’m not going to say that there was a whole lot of variety but if you like the chance to pick what you think are the prettiest looking strawberries then this was a great place to be. With the added benefit of them being cheaper where they are grown than they are once they make it to Asuncion.

We browsed for about three quarters of an hour to the music blaring over the loud speaker before deciding that we had bought all that we wanted (1 ½ kilos of strawberries to take home for me) and that we really wanted to see where the berries were grown before we left. Strawberry fields could be found less than a hundred meters from where the festival was set up, and after gaining permission from an old man sitting by the side of the road we wandered down the dirt path between two sets of fields. Talk about a field with a view! Behind the six or so fields lined up we could catch glimpses of the lake and the palm trees. Making this one of the most picturesque places I’ve been in Paraguay. I was more intrigued by seeing how this fruit grows than the festival itself. Rows of dirt piled up, covered in plastic, with holes for the strawberry plants to grow up through. Dark green leaves next to dark canvas made the ripe red strawberries stand out and cause my mouth to start watering. Barbed wire fences to protect the fields from…cows? People? Homemade sheds along the edges acted as storage for boxes. When I saw one field being harvested by hand I had to be glad that it wasn’t my job and that I could just buy a basket of strawberries that were ready to eat. My back is thankful for that as well. It was interesting to see another side of life in Paraguay and I will eat my fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries with much greater appreciation now.