Paraguay is a poor country. Twice as poor as Mexico, if you believe in statistics. Yet the people are tall and sleek. You don't see goiters or toothless mouths or milk-white eyeballs. The old women in the market stalls are well turned out. The shoeshine boys are clean and kempt. Asunción has so few beggars that they're known by name. There are slums. One of the worst is a squatter settlement on the mud flats below the cathedral. But the hovels have small yards and flowers and trees, and there's a clipped and chalk-lined soccer field in the midst of them. The cars on the streets are mostly old, but they're interesting old cars like my airport taxi, the kind you used to see in American college towns - Volkswagen Beetles with Baja Bug front ends, comical 2CV Citroens, out-of-tune 914 Porsches with Bondo on the fenders and plumply dignified little Mercedes sedans from the 1950s. I was told that a lot of these cars were stolen in Brazil. If so, it's a tasteful and understated kind of car theft.

Did he get the VINs, and, any /6s?

Paul