We jumped out of the taxi at the Argentina/Brazil border and said our goodbyes to Kevin’s parents. The taxi driver instructed us to exit through Argentinean customs and then take a bus from the border check point that would take us through Brazil and into Ciudad del Este in Paraguay without stopping and requiring us to do immigration paperwork in Brazil or Paraguay. The reason for this is that Ciudad del Este is a city that thrives based on the sale of discount electronics. In order to promote shoppers to cross, the Paraguayan and Brazilian borders allow people to cross the Puente de Amistad (literally bridge of friendship) without requiring entry and exit paperwork which would cause long lines and disincentive potential shoppers.
We decided to spent one night in Ciudad del Este in part because we didn’t know how quickly we would be able to cross between the 3 countries, in part to break up our travels, and in part to see another city in Paraguay. It turns out that if you aren’t interested in shopping there is not a whole lot to see in Ciudad del Este. We found a park near the hostel where we stayed at and went for a walk around the perimeter in the morning. In the afternoon we walked to the bus stop to pick up tickets for the following day to Asuncion.
The bus ride from Ciudad del Este to Asuncion was an easy and uneventful 6 hour bus ride. We arrived into the bus station in Asuncion in the early afternoon when it was hot and humid so we decided to splurge on a taxi instead of our usual method of taking the local buses. We arrived at the apartment building that we had rented from booking.com and found that there was no doorman downstairs to let us into the building. Normally reservations on AirBnB suggest that you coordinate key transfers with the owner, but with booking.com listings we have always been able to just show up in the past. While reviewing the confirmation email from Booking we saw a note that said to contact the owner prior to arrival to coordinate getting the keys. Unfortunately, at this point we had no cell phone, no internet access, and no cyber cafes nearby.
Kevin set out in search of an internet cafe or one of the businesses where you can pay to use their phone, leaving Lisa to watch our bags. When he walked across the street to ask 2 ladies sitting in plastic chairs in front of a business where he could find such a place one of the ladies offered to take him to another lady who had keys to the building and lived a couple of doors down. After a few minutes of explaining to the lady with the keys how we had arrived with a reservation but no keys and no way to contact our host, the nice lady offered to call the contact person from the listing and get them to come and let us in. She also opened the doors and let us sit in the lobby to wait the 15 minutes we had been told it would take for the keys to arrive. About 45 minutes later a nice young gentleman arrived to let us in and to apologize for the delay in letting us into the building. In the future we will make it a point to read all of our reservations a bit more carefully.
Of all the countries that we have visited in Central and South America, Paraguay is by far the least developed for tourism. We spent a good deal of time researching places to go but aside from a couple of national parks that were 6+ hours by bus away from Asuncion we couldn’t find much so we decided to spend a little more time in Asuncion. The city has a small downtown area with some high rise buildings and a few landmarks to visit, but after visiting major metropolitan areas like Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Santiago, Asuncion had substantially less to visit. Also, Asuncion felt less safe to walk around than the other big cities especially at night which combined with the hot humid weather during the day left us feeling unmotivated to go for our usual long walks around the city. We walked for a couple of hours each day around the city center and spent the rest of the time in the apartment that we rented trying to catch up on our blog (we were over a month behind at that point).
After 5 days in Asuncion we felt that we had more than exhausted all there was to see and felt well rested and ready to get back on the road. From Asuncion we headed back to Iguazu where we stayed in Foz do Iguazu on the Brazil side for a 2 nights before flying on to Brasilia and begin exploring our final country of South America for our trip. Having already visited the waterfalls we decided to explore the town of Foz do Iguazu. On our walk we stopped into a Brazilian steakhouse where they bring a variety of different meats to your table on swordlike skewers and cut you off as much as you want. They also had an all you can eat salad bar so both of us were able to eat well. The meat was some of the best Kevin had had on our trip and the meals cost less than $6 per person. We both left stuffed and Kevin ended up skipping dinner because he was still full from the buffet experience.
Tomorrow we have to get up bright and early to catch the bus to the airport and get on our 9 am flight to Brasilia.