As outlined in other posts I first came to Paraguay in 2002. Back then I came to teach English to children. That I did on a voluntary project in the countryside outside the town of Piribebuy.

Doing that was very enjoyable thing to do, and very rewarding.

I left to head back to England after nearly two years in 2004. By then the project was running down and would shortly come to it’s natural conclusion.

Back in England I took time to consider what to do next. Looking around I could see nothing that particularily appealed to me. Two years of freeedom living in South America did not make the prospect of returning to an English office overly exciting.

As it was I stayed in the UK for just three months whilst I decided what to do next.

In the end I chose to return to Paraguay and to see if was going to be possible to build a life there.

By the time I arrived back the school had long gone and all the buildings it had used were being reterned to their original farm yard purposes.

It made sense to me to start my search for a home in the neighbourhood that had housed the school. I had got to know the area and made a number of local friends.

Whilst I took the time to see if my idea was a feasable one I lodged with a local family. That gave me a base and people nearby to asssit me in my quest.

Over the next couple of months I looked at a number of possible properties. Mostly nearby, but a couple a little more distant.

One of my greatest troubles was that no one seemed to have a piece of land avalible that was just big enough for a house and garden. Everything on offer was far larger.

That has now changed as selling large properties as small individual plots is now very much the fashion.

However in the end I did find something that appeared suitable. A plot of land covered with sugarcane only about half a mile from where the school had been.

It represented far more land than I really wanted, but I was convinced to buy it by the cheapness of the land.

Also I saw it’s potential. It was on land the rose gently away from the road and faced a horizon to horizon view of rugged hilltops.

The property covered an area of 8.5 hectres and I dicided I would leave the problem of what to do with all that land for another day.

I am not the only foreigner to come to Paraguay and after being amazed by the apparent cheapness of land ended up buying too much of it.

The actual purchase of the land was simple and straight forwards. Back then I did not yet have a Paraguayan ID card. Using my British passport was sufficient for identification.

Most important of all was making sure that the property deeds to the land were all in order and in the name of the person who was selling it to me. They were, and so the purchase was trouble free.

When buying property here in Paraguay a notary is required to action all the legal processes.

I was told of a good, reliable, and trustworthy one in Piribebuy. She turned out to be all those things and processed the land purchase for me without any trouble and surprises. I have used her several more times over the years and am always happy to suggest people use her as a notary when they require one.

When purchasing properties in Paraguay the usual practice is to have the notary draw up a private contract between the buyer and seller before the legal processes begin. At this point it is normal to pay a deposit to the seller of 5% or 10%.

That done I had nothing more to do than wait for new title deeds to be drawn up in my name.

Doing that only took about a month and so then after paying the balance of the purchase price the land was mine.

Having now bought the land the next item was to get a house built.

With the freedom you have on your land in Paraguay when it comes to building I was able to walk around a little looking for the spot with the best view. Once I had found a view I was happy with I then simply stuck a stick in the ground to mark where the house would be.

Next I had enough sugarcane cleared away for a spot for the house to be built on and a working area around it. Whilst the house was built the rest was cleared. I suspect some would have been taken and sold, but that did not bother me.

As for the house itself. I did not want anything fancy. Just a box divided into rooms that was large enough to never feel cramped.

So simple was the house design that I was able to draw it up myself.

I then hired a team of locals as my builders and after giving them the plan I had drawn they set about house building.

Many of the materials came from nearby, such as the bricks which arrived by ox cart, or as with the rooftiles, direct from the factory. Other items on the whole came from a building suppliers in Piribebuy and were send out bit by bit on the bus. Even bags of cement arrived that way.

The actual build took several months as once the structure of the house was finished the pace at which everyone worked slowed. It did though get finished in the end I was able to move into my new home and look out over my own personal bit of Paraguayan countryside.

It soon though did become clear that 8.5 hectares was far too much for one person. Even after lending out land for cattle grazing or crop fields there was still far more than I could ever get any use from.

Things continued that way for a few years. All along I tried without success to thing I some way I could use and manage it.

Eventually it became clear that the only option was to get rid of some of it buy selling it.

Looking at the shape of the land and thinking of how it would better be shaped what I chose to do in the end was sell off 6 hectares and keep 2.5 hectares for myself. The portion I kept would then be a square block with the house at it’s center distant from any of the fences.

So I put the land up for sale in about 2010 and as is nearly always the case it took a few years before I found a buyer.

That brought me to 2013 and left me with a much more managable 2.5 hectares to live in.

Again I used the notary in Piribebuy I had used when I purchased the land in the first place. One more the process was simple and painless.

The buyer lived far away the other side of the country and I was expecting him to have a holiday home built for use during the summer months. Instead a more simple house was built along with various animal sheds. Then a groundsman was installed to look after everything.

Over the following years I saw the owner no more than two or three times and there was a stready turn over in groundsmen with several new ones being installed and then replaced.

It seems that the whole business was deemed impracticable by 2023. The last groundsman left and the property was put up for sale.

So it is now sitting there abandoned becoming everymore overgrown waiting for a fresh owner to come along.

Therefore if anyone fancies being my neighbour I know where 6 hectares of Paraguayan grassland can be found.