Moved home

I have transfered my blog over to my new website.

Please head there for all my latest news and on going up dates

simonsparaguay.com

I look forward to seeing you there

Simon

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How I came to Paraguay

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Relocating from England to Paraguay is probably neither the most common nor obvious way of moving abroad so it would help if I explained a little of how it came about. Back in the later part of the last century there I was filling the days working in an English bank. All very well while there was thinking and maths involved but as the new century dawned things requiring a bit of thought became centralised and the place slowly turned into a shop. All very well for some people, but not for me. I spent a while looking for something else in the UK but could see nothing that looked any better than where I already was. So getting away from jobs and the UK began looking better and better. At first my thoughts were to take a year out and go travelling the world. My problem with that though was that I felt I would be forever travelling through without ever getting more than the most superficial insights into anywhere and would never really get the chance to meet the local population any...
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Big spider, little spider

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Paraguay is home to a great variety of wildlife much of which appeals to everyone. However it is probably fair to say that it might not be a comfortable place for those with concerns about eight legged creatures. Almost everywhere one looks in Paraguay spiders are to be seen. These range from the very smallest right up to large tarantulas, and from the harmless to the deadly. There are web building orb spiders, spiders that string lines between trees like fishing lines, funnel spiders with their dense webs leading down into their lairs and many others that build no webs at all. Orb spiders build their large webs amongst the trees and vegetation and then settle down to await the arrival of their prey. As with all orb spiders these are intricate pieces of art which glisten in the morning dew and are replaced and rebuilt as often as necessary. The sticky stands of silk produced by those spiders who use it cast a line and move from place to place is also quickly rebuilt. The silk...
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Fire! Fire!

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Winter in Paraguay is the dry season, a time of year when the grass dry or if there has been frost, die back leaving just straw behind. All this turns the ground to a tinderbox in grave danger from fire. So it was for me a couple of winters back. I returned home after doing my business in town to be confronted with the alarming sight of a garden on fire. I quickly rushed back to the house, changed into old clothes and then headed out to find the cause and see what was being done about it. It was clear that the fire had been burning for sometime and was well established. It was burning about ten metres within my boundries on a front at least one hundred metres across. Already I could see a large blackened area of land beyond my fence where the flames had already passed turning everything to ash. It did not take long to locate the culprit for he was standing to the side of the flames looking resigned to watching everything burn. He was the groundkeeper of the neighbouring prope...
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