Paradise with Serpents: Travels in the Lost World of Paraguay

by Robert Carver

Published by Harper Perennial, September 2007, £8.99 (a paperback original)

Do all Paraguayans carry guns?

"I wouldn't say all – no, not by a long chalk," an expert on the country tells Robert Carver. "However, it is fairly common. I mean, there are shootings all the time – I mean every day, everywhere. And knife fights, of course. It's as well to be very polite to people. That generally pays off. Unless they want to kill you, in which case no amount of politeness would help."

As tea is to China and cuckoo clocks to Switzerland, so weapons are to Paraguay. With this view, it's not surprising that Carver seems to be one of the few tourists visiting this surreal and landlocked South American kleptocracy. He tells us that in the months before his arrival dozens of city buses were held up at gunpoint. The Minister of Defence (allegedly) loaned an army tank to facilitate a bank robbery. Assassinations were undertaken for $25 and taxis drove around empty because passengers tended to be robbed then "disappeared". So why on earth does he decide to stride into this maelstrom? Because he is fascinated by the world's "half-made, half-abandoned places" (his previous book explored equally lawless and piratical Albania). And also because – paradoxically — Paraguay has long attracted Utopians dreaming of paradise.

None of Carver's fears are disappointed on his terrifying journey. He is chased by a machete-wielding drunk and shadowed by secret policemen. He rides in stolen cars and swims with drug barons. He sidesteps the former Hotel Adolf Hitler, an establishment now frequented by paedophiles. When a coup d'etat threatens the capital, he escapes on a barge into the interior, awakening first to find his toes being sucked on by vampire bats and later to face an old Nazi with Alzheimer's disease armed with an automatic. In upcountry Concepción, he is mistaken for an arms smuggler.

"Did you bring the guns?" he is asked. "We need heavy weapons ... tanks also would be nice. Tanks and armoured cars with flame-throwers, napalm and grenade launchers."

While dodging ricocheting bullets, Carver charts the history of the European idealists who, with the discovery of America, were given a "plausible geographical locus" for their Arcadia. In years past Jesuits, Mennonites, Australian communists and Nazi war criminals created colonies here. Today the Moonies are buying up haciendas. As he wryly observes, the reality of his modern Paraguay is far from the hopeful dreams of Utopians "who planned the salvation of mankind away from Old World corruptions and temptations".

No surprise, then, that he too decides to pack a pistol. But he isn't carrying it when – in broad daylight in the centre of the capital – he is mugged. Two flip-flop-wearing thugs pistol-whip him to the ground. His camera and "sacrificial" wallet are snatched yet he escapes, running, crouching low, pumping blood from his head. Later when the wound is stitched, he is asked if he will ever return to Paraguay.

"No," he answers. "I shall never come back."

If this is an accurate portrait of a poor, benighted land, who can blame him? But earlier visitors — among them Isabel Hilton and John Gimlette — did not find Paraguay to be so violent. Traveller's bad luck? Or is Carver allowing his gift for dramatic narration to spin a war-torn tale?

Carver is an unromantic, self-effacing, charming and intelligent storyteller. His journey often sways off track, digressing into opinionated essays on human nature, post-war British socialism, US economic imperialism and the selfishness of Western culture. At first the digressions strain the narrative, but then their accumulation begin to enrich Paradise With Serpents and elevate it into a compelling, dark, often mesmerising, laugh-out-loud travel yarn.

On his flight out of Asunción, Carver feels as if he's been released from prison – "exhilaration, sheer bliss, a sense of absolute freedom. I could go anywhere, safely". He vows that his next book will be on a harmless and comfortable subject; perhaps an in-depth personal account of the gastronomic restaurants of the Côte d'Azur. I beg him to change his mind, for his readers' sake if not his own. Obedient and consumerist Western Europe will dull his mad verve for drama. Instead, I hope that once again he — apparently — takes his life in his hands and descends into another hellish, lawless and dotty destination ... say, Haiti, or perhaps the Congo or North Korea.

· Rory MacLean's latest book Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India is published by Penguin. It is available to buy from the Guardian Bookshop.