Strawberry Festival, Aregua

Ever since arriving in Asuncion, I’ve heard about the Aregua Strawberry Festival. Last year, we took the train to Aregua, but we didn’t notice any strawberries, so I thought we had missed the festival by a week or so. Well it turns out, we were there last year during the strawberry festival, we just didn’t go to the right spot. The “festival” (you’ll see why I put it in quotations in a minute) is a good way out of town. There was no way, outside of a taxi, that we were going to be able to find it.

This year, we caught a ride with Kathryn and Jac. Kathryn’s boyfriend Lorenzo being Paraguayan, he knew right were to go. Let me describe for you the “festival.” There are about 15 booths along the side of the road. Each booth has the following things for sale- strawberries in a basket, strawberries with cream, strawberry shortcake, strawberry liquor, and strawberry jam. There were no games, activities, nor variety in the booths. Each booth had exactly the same things that cost exactly the same prices. It was hard for me to consider it a festival.

The highlight of our Aregua trip for me was shopping the pottery that Aregua is famous for and Jesse and I bought a little addition to our house. Paraguayan legend/folklore says that its lucky for a house to have a sapo (toad or frog) around the house. So, we looked for the most outrageous frogs we could find, and settled for these cute guys. The total cost of the newest addition to our house? 10 mil, or 2 dollars. And that includes the bench.