After going to the
local casino in San Ignacio for their Thursday Karoke night, my friend Casey
and I decided it would be awesome to host a Thanksgiving dinner in San Ignacio.
We could have a big early dinner at my
house or the office and then go to the casino for some singing, dancing
fun. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get
enough people to commit to coming, so I invited myself to my friend Melissa’s
Thanksgiving in her site in Villa Florida.
Villa Florida is on a river and Melissa had already arranged to have her
dinner at a hotel with a pool.
River/Pool is a very fair exchange for Karoke.
Casey made garlic
potatoes, Julia made hummus, and I made apple pie that morning, caught one of the
only double decker buses (with ac!) that will actually stop in San Ignacio without
charging the full price all of the way to the capital, even if you want to get
off sooner. Amazingly they charged Casey
and me the normal price (it was such a nice bus they could have charged up to
50% more), and they completely forgot to charge Julia at all.
(Pie and Potatoes on the Double Decker Bus)
We were all dressed
up, so there was a lot of rubber necking going on while we waited at the bus
stop, including 5-6 of the local police officers piled into their truck cruising
around, and a set of guys in a truck who
let their vehicle roll back 4 car lengths so their car would be waiting
in front of us instead of at the stoplight they were at.
We got to Villa
Floriday around 3, having only picked at food around my house and finishing off
the hamburgers I made the night before so we were getting hungry. We found out dinner wasn’t going to happen until about 7pm, so after a quick dip
in the pool we heated up some pita bread and broke open some Lays and went to
town on the hummus. I have to say, it’s
the best batch I’ve helped make. I think
I might just have to stop making it because I don’t think I’ll be able to top
it.
In true Hora
Paraguaya fashion, the locals didn’t start arriving for dinner until 9-10pm,
after Melissa messaged them tell them to get to the hotel because the turkey
was done and we were ready to eat.
Potluck style dinners aren’t really the norm, the host usually provides
everything. But Melissa’s friends did a
good job of bringing additional dishes and we had a nice assortment of
different meat dishes, potato salad,
empanadas, etc.
Julia, Casey and I
had eaten so much hummus that we could hardly take advantage of the main
course. But we did our best. Julia made a serious dent in the sausage
plate in front of her, like there was an actual divot in the cut sausage
pile. Admittedly it was really good.
Before we cut the
turkey, we each went around the table saying what we were thankful for, a new
tradition for the locals, who were very hesitant at first, especially the few
stragglers that came after the main group had gone and started eating. But Melissa held firm and told them they
couldn’t eat until they shared.
I was surprised how
some of the guests actually seemed ot like the hummus we made. It had a really strong flavor, which usually Paraguayans
don’t like. The potatoes didn’t go over
real well since we put a bunch of pepper and garlic. The apple pie, which was very tart and cinnamon,
didn’t go over very well either, since they prefer their desserts very sweet
and sugary. Not that Julia, Casey, and I
were at all perturbed by this. Casey ate
the last half piece for breakfast the next morning, most of it was polished off
while waiting for the bus that evening.
We left around 11pm
to catch a bus back to San Ignacio, got charged the correct price again!
Amazing! Got back into San Ignacio a little after midnight and started walking
the 15minutes back to my house. As we
did a carful of guys offered us a ride, we declined, and declined, and declined
again. They even offered to get out of their car and walk with us. No thanks gents. They eventually got the message
and went away. Like I said ,we were
looking pretty fancy, even if we felt like whales.
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