I’d like to think the overnight bus ride to San Ignacio will be the last Christi and I do in South America. Admittedly it does save a night’s accommodation, but the ride is invariably uncomfortable and you can’t see the surrounding countryside or have much in the way of interaction with the locals – arguably the essence of backpacking. This is lost if you’re snoring the night away on a moving bed. As I mentioned yesterday I slept well for once, although the seat I’m given on the San Ignacio bus is disturbingly warm and lived-in. I have to remove the remnants of the last occupant’s dinner before I can settle in. Yuck. Fortunately we are allowed to sleep until 9 am, before the officious conductor shakes Christi and I awake with a breakfast tray. On reflection, I wish we had a ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs like they use in hotels room, though, because the processed snack and sugary drink are not really worth waking up for. (Note the Spanish translation for do not disturb is no molestar. That’s right, no molesting me while I’m trying to sleep – that’s a little bit funny, isn’t it?).
We reach San Ignacio by mid-morning. Or I should say we get as close as the bus driver deems acceptable. Perhaps he’s trying to make up for lost time, but it’s noticeable that only Christi and I alight at this impromptu stop on the main road, some half a mile east of the town itself. The bus speeds off in a cloud of dust, leaving Christi and I to hoist our packs onto our shoulders and stagger through the unbelievable humidity into town.
We are relieved to find a double room with a private bath, air-con, and TV at the centrally located San Ignacio hotel for A$100. It oozes the convenience and luxury we had been expecting in C.C. Pellegrini. San Ignacio is a small, sleepy hamlet, not much visited by foreign tourists. Indeed this whole north-east corridor between Paraguay and Brazil is often skipped as people race, well fly, to Iguazu Falls. We’re taking the slower less traveled route, for once stopping at the Esteros del Ibera and now the mission ruins at San Ignacio. This mission is part of the larger practice of Jesuit colonization and conversion of the local native people that occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries. According to historian Charles Lippy and colleagues this practice could either be thought of as the creation of jungle utopias or a theocratic regime of terror. Either way, the life of the Guarani Indians was changed forever. Excavation and reclamation of the San Ignacio mission did not begin until 1940. Prior to that date, the ruins lay hidden beneath impenetrable jungle – something that Christi and I have seen at other religious sites, notably the Buddhist temple of Ta Prohm in Cambodia.
Blog post by Roderick Phillips, author of Weary Heart – a gut-wrenching, heart-wrenching, laugh-wrenching story.
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