3.45pm 3/10/05-The boat is stuck on a sandbank after a good start from Conception. We are facing back the way we came and the little boat we were towing is now out in the river, one of the crew is trying to find deeper water with a long pole.
The boat; The Guarani, is fully loaded with mountains of produce and supplies for the villages and settlements along the way upstream. We picked up a few passengers just as we left Conception but there is plenty of room on the boat and we can wander around the whole thing. We have a small cabin with just enough room for the bunk bed and a little space for our bags and legs, its not really the place for spending too much time though.We also just found out our journey will be closer to 48 hours than the 24 we expected. 1 bag of bread rolls, 1 sweaty block of cheese that started off sliced but has since returned to its former state as a block, 2 liters of Coke, 5 liters of water, 3 small onions(could almost be shallots), a packet of chocolate biscuits and a large tin of peaches....our supplies for 24 hours but now need to last 48. eek.
The Guarani is a freighter that travels up and down the Rio Paraguay from Ascuncion to Bahai Negra over the space of 2 weeks, it takes a few passengers but the duration and slightly higher cost than the passenger boat puts people off.
4.05pm and the boat is loose and heading up river again.

6.30am 4/10/05-Puerto Pinasco. Woke up to the sound of silence, no engine pounding away below our cabin as it had been when i got to sleep a few hours ago. The engine contributes to the oven like feel of our tiny cabin. There are at least four spiders working away in the high and dark corners of the cabin catching the many flies and mosquitos that also inhabit the tiny space.The heat was intense and sleep was light when it came and full of strange dreams, noises and movements but now all was still and quiet. The sun rises early and the heat gets stronger.
The people of the town are carrying off all their orders; cigarette cartons,Coke bottles, beer cans, sacks of flour, dried pasta, fruit, plastic pipes and rolls of wire. The unloaders are a mix of men and boys all working hard at 6 in the morning, the old men seem to work harder and you can see its been this way a long time by their faces.
Most of the passengers have gone, dropped off at various places during the night. The Guarani family who were camped on the benches outside our cabin have gone, all thats left is my bed roll i gave to the mother last night and a packet of Mate they left behind. They have been replaced by a well dressed man in an orange hammock.
7.50am-the engines start and five minutes later we leave the people of Puerto Pinasco sorting through their piles of Coke and pasta, a family of big brown hairy pigs are picking through the rubbish next to the steep jetty.