We arrived at the Hotel Florida at 4:15 AM which was 3:15 Paraguay time, for some reason. We unloaded and I assigned rooms, asking for a 10:00 wake-up call with breakfast at 10:30. I slept until 9:30. Breakfast included an interesting yogurt drink that said “Bebible” (drinkable) but it seemed appropriate in this Mennonite community. It only stayed in me for half an hour before rocketing out the other end. I took some Imodium. The students were really slow so we postponed departure until after a good-looking buffet lunch that was attended my many Mennonites for their Sunday noon meal. I decided not to eat, although I felt fine.

Unlike yesterday, the road was a good highway. We flew along the pavement over the 450 km to Ascunción in six hours, passing through Chaco farmland and pastureland. Wherever the land was not farmed, the native vegetation remained dominant.

We were stopped at several police controls to have our papers examined. Angel got us through the first two fairly quickly. But at the third one he was really mad when he came out and said the guy was drunk and wanted money. I went in with Angel and the guy was plowed. He said, "So you've traveled 600 km without the proper papers….”. I cut him off and said, “We came here to learn about Paraguay . We've learned that the national police are ineffective and inefficient. They don't man their border crossings and when they man their controls, they are drunk….”. He looked at me and nodded. Then, he started slowly writing a paragraph. When he finished he said we could proceed to his headquarters a few km down the road. There, his superior started giving us trouble so I insisted that he look at my visa from the República de Paraguay and told him we all had visas. He mellowed fairly quickly. He took our list of people and passport numbers and let us go. I asked if we could use their bathroom and he let us all go ahead and use it.

It was after dark when we arrived in Ascunción. Angel contracted a cab and we followed the cab to the Ascunción Palace Hotel and checked in.