False start but 4 star one!

I'm getting the hang of South America now, it's as laid back and chaotic as India but I understand what they are saying. The previous post was a little premature. This is turning into a Joel-type saga. I am still in Paraguay. The plane fell to pieces, well, technical problems they called it, luckily before we took off. So, now I am in a 4 star hotel with free wifi and dial up in the rooms for the day and night.Leave for Bolivia in the morning. So, dug the laptop out and moved into the bar as it's freebies on the airlines.

I don't know the first thing about Paraguay except that the runway was every bit as skiddy as reported on virtualtourist. The airport was OK, out in the middle of fields and ranches, although it's been a bit of a day for Customs visiting. Let's start at the beginning.

I arrived in Sao Paolo at 5am and was told that my bag had been checked onto the next flight so I didn't have to worry about it. Go to Desk 16. So I did, but then it turned out my ticket hadn't been brought through from the office so I had to go out through Immigration - very neat bit of queue jumping that saved me over an hour and pissed off about 100 South Americans. Picked my ticket up and then had to check in. Even though I didn't have anything to check in and my boarding card was at gate 16 on the other side of Customs, that was a 1 hr queue too that I couldn't jump! Back through security - more queues, and then get to the other side to find I'm stuck there for 2 hours and there's bog all there apart from the odd seat and an Upper Crust cafe with no bloody wifi. They wouldn't let me go through immigration again for a surf and smoke, so that was pretty tedious all round.

Got on the plane with the entire CCP squad who appear to be pretty famous footballers and had their own pink and white groupie who obviously entertained them with her antics (and stupidity). By now, I'm looking forward to getting the last flight as it seems to have been around 30 hours since I left home now. Oh yeah, I guess we'd better mention that the BA flight out wasn't full so the people next to me decamped to the front, leaving me with a bank of 3 seats, all their blankets and cushions. I basically constructed a nest and slept like a log for 8 hours!!! 3 seats is just the right length of a knackered Annison and I woke up just as they were serving breakfast, much to the obvious ire of others around me who hadn't been quite so comfy for so long! Hopefully the sound of the engines drowned out my snoring for them ;o)

Anyway, got to Asuncion to find that my bag was gaily whizzing round the carousel about 20ft away from me but I couldn't get it without going past the tetchy immigration official who refused to understand the word transit. So, fill out yet another form, get another stamp in the passport, collect bag, walk upstairs, pay a tax of 18 dollars, walk through Customs, get pulled by the antidrug squad who couldn't cope with the fact tht I had been in the country less than 30 minutes, had been out amongst the unwashed public with my bags and come back to get on a flight to Bolivia. I know better than to make jokes with these guys so tried to explain to him what was going on. He couldn't get his head round that and blatantly didn't believe i was on business. What is company name? I picked up my laptop bag and showed him Digital Dales conference bags do come in handy sometimes!! Hang on,just off to talk to sprogs, next instalment about paraguay shortly.