This afternoon when I stopped by my friend Carmen’s house and she invited me to go with her husband, Viktor, and his brother-in-law, Nelson, to plant eucalyptus in his field on Cerro Tres Kandu. I decided to accept the offer because if nothing else, it would be beautiful.

We headed on our way and soon turned off the highway onto a long and windy dirt road headed toward the tallest hill in Paraguay. We started to gain altitude and swerved over mud, making our way deeper into the forest. As we reached a lookout spot, a large black cat (jaguar!) rushed into the shadows of the trees.

When we finally arrived at his eucalyptus field I looked up to see flowering pink trees scattered over the cerro and down to see the rolling foothills turning into flat swampland. We chatted with the two Paraguayans planting the eucalyptus saplings and admired their hard work. Soon, Nelson got out his binoculars and started spouting out the names of all the birds he saw in Spanish, Guaraní, and English.

Before we left, Viktor and Nelson wanted to pick lemons from a tree they knew about so I changed into mucklucks and we started our treck. We passed over two streams and arrived at an abandoned wood house surrounded by trees filled with lemons and large red grapefruits. While we were harvesting the fruits it started downpouring so we ran into the old shack to take refuge. We decided to wait for the rain to let up and sliced into one of the grapefruits to pass the time.

When we had finished the delectable fruit we saw darker storm clouds rolling in from further down the hill so we decided to cut down banana leaves to hold over out heads. With our makeshift umbrellas we ran over the two streams and back to the truck. We rode home protected from the rain but drenched and smiling.