Skateboarding
Skateboarding
Meet the local skaters of Paraguay on the Heartbeats To Heaven tour
Tyler Surrey, Angelo Caro, Maxim Habanec and Giovanni Vianna kick-off the first ever pro skate tour of the tiny, landlocked South American nation.
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Paraguay isn't the most conventional destination to go on a skate tour. Located in the heart of South America, this small but welcoming country of around seven million people experienced its first ever pro skate tour recently, when for 12 days a crew consisting of Angelo Caro, Maxim Habanec, Tyler Surrey and Giovanni Vianna touched down to meet the local skaters who've created their own tiny, but ripping, skate-scene.
Giovanni Vianna – Nosegrind Rag Off
© Gaston Francisco
Tyler Surrey – Crooked Grind
© Gaston Francisco
Angelo Caro – Lipslide
© Gaston Francisco
Giovanni Vianna – Wallie
© Gaston Francisco
Nestled between Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia, Paraguay is landlocked and boasts a vast population of indigenous Guarani natives. Spanish and Guarani are its official languages. Paraguay's location bordering the Mato Grosso jungle means it's a country full of lush vegetation and intersected by many rivers, which run like veins towards the south. Paraguay is also traversed by a split created millions of years ago that's formed some of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world. All of these elements proved too attractive for us not to feel the urge to explore this magnificent country.
We met up in humid capital city, Asunción, to be greeted by Fede Pussin, an adopted local who knows most of the spots. Pussin was accompanied by local rippers Leandro Acuña and Renan Godoy, who where exhilarated by the possibility of ripping their usual spots with an international crew.
The spots in Paraguay are rough: this country has not been blessed by the maná of successful capitalism and therefore infrastructure can be decrepit, while humidity and tropical rains combine to make asphalt scarce, and where present, often fragmented.
Giovanni Vianna – Boardslide
© Gaston Francisco
Giovanni Vianna – Smith Grind
© Gaston Francisco
Tyler Surrey – Frontside Flip
© Gaston Francisco
Angelo Caro – Smith Grind
© Gaston Francisco
Asunción is unsurprisingly home to most of the best spots in the country and we managed to find some very interesting ones. Rainbow rails seemed to be a must outside fancy buildings.
Most of those buildings however also came with a few security guards, who'd kick us out most of the time – although we managed to skate when they weren't around.
After a few days of enjoying the spots in the capital during which Caro and Vianna pretty much destroyed everything in their path, we ventured out on the road south towards the small city of Encarnación, right on the border with Argentina.
This was uncharted skate territory: not even the locals had ever made it that far. The city was tiny, but, luckily, we managed to find a couple of spots that got put to good use.
On the other side of the large river border lay the city of Posadas in Argentina. From our bank of the river you could see that Posadas was much larger and more developed and so we ventured out on a day mission to explore. The border crossing was quite interesting, since we were told that it would be faster for us to take public transport rather than taxi.
We did so and after an eight-minute train ride on a bridge over the river, we jumped on a city bus that took us to downtown Posadas, where we met local skater Andrew, who had a great grip of spots waiting for us.
After five hours of constant sweating due to the intense heat, we crossed back on the train, happy at our decision: the spots in Posadas were much better than we'd hoped for, or expected.
By this juncture, we were ready to cross Paraguay once again to hit up the city of Ciudad del Este in the East and continue our first-ever skateboard mission through Paraguay and its closest neighbours.
Join us next episode for wheelbite and waterfalls from one of the world's least-explored countries.
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