Most Corrupt Country Outside Africa; Paraguay Here I Come!

Getting to Paraguay proved a lot harder, then I had initially thought. I had hoped to get the 9 o'clock bus to Ciudad Del Este, which would drive straight through Brazil, so that I wouldn't have to get off and do the border formalities. However I woke up at 9.40, and thus was unable to make that bus, and wasn't bothered to get the 10 o'clock bus, as I would have to hurry a lot. So I took it easy, ate the bread there was for breakfast at the hostel.

I checked out and went down to the Terminal to get my 11 o'clock bus, boarded it and paid my 3 pesos, and so it set off. I got stamped out of Argentina, went back on board the bus and got dumped off in Brazil? That wasn't to plan, but there wasn't much to do about it. The busdriver told us (I got off together with an English guy, German girl and an Argentinian girl) that another bus would be along in 20 minutes. So we all got our Brazilian entry stamps. Back at the bus stop, nothing happened. 20 minutes passed, then 30, 40, 50, 1 hour had gone by and still no bus. The German girl was getting extremely impatient and kept muttering to herself as she had wanted to catch a bus from Ciudad Del Este to Santa Cruz (Bolivia). So when a bus finally came, it wasn't with out company, so we couldn't get on it. The German girl just bought a new ticket from the bus driver and was off.

In hindsight, I would have gotten on the bus with her, but I had no idea that the bus would never come along... After a little while, the 2 Danish girls I had met the previous day came along, waited for their bus (they were only going to Foz de Iguacu (the Brazilian town) and left. They were followed by 2 Swedish girls who did the same. So eventually I got to know the people I were waiting with quite well. Daniel (Dan) from England and his girlfriend Rommi from Cordoba (Argentina, not Spain), who were out traveling until Dan had to go back to England again (a week later). We talked especially a lot about our bus, and whether or not it would actually come. So after 2 hours and 40 minutes, we had just had enough. We got very upset with out bus company NSA (Never Stops Anywhere) and took a taxi, it was 60 peso all the way to Ciudad Del Este, a lot more expensive than the bus, but then the bus never came.

Leaving Brazil was easy enough, there was no queue, we just got our stamps and drove across the international Friendship bridge, a bride you should never walk across, unless you don't care about being mugged. On the other side we did our border formalities, got a very beautiful stamp in my passport and located our hotel, which our driver offered to take us to for free. The hotel was in the Lonely Planet guide listed as 13 dollars for a single room, but upon arrival it turned out to be a 35 dollar room. So Dan and Rommi offered to share a triple room with me, which brought the price down to a much more sensible. Had the final price been 35 dollars, I would have found another place. But 15 dollars was acceptable, especially since it was a nice hotel (Hotel Munich), and in Ciudad Del Este, you don't want to scrimp. There are plenty of very cheap places, but there are even more dodgy places with absolutely no security.

Dan and Rommi had initially hoped to go to the Itaipu dam, but unfortunately it was too late for that trip, so we walked around Ciudad Del Este, an enormous cheap electronics market... My kind of place. For lunch Dan had read about a Lebanese place in the Lonely Planet guide, unfortunately it was nowhere to be found, so instead we went into a mini-market next to a mosque, and asked. The owner didn't know of it, but he was Lebanese and his uncle owned a restaurant not far away, so he had his little brother take us there. Without him we would never have found it, in fact, without the little brother we would never have entered the building, found our way to the second floor and sat down there. The place (not the restaurant) looked extremely dodgy and ready to collapse, the restaurant itself was a kitchen with 1 table and 4 chairs, but the food... The food was fantastic; this was one of those places where locals come, and it stays local, because they don't want to share the gorgeous food. I had a sort of roll with minced lamb and assorted vegetables in it, part of which tasted like some vegetarian meat replacement, which I had once tasted in Amsterdam at a shawarma place (not surprising).

We went back to the hotel and relaxed as there wasn't much to do, the market was beginning to close, and that really is all there is. So we settled down, Dan and I talked while Rommi slept. Once it was late, Dan and I went out looking for dining places that weren't too expensive. We eventually found a nice place, so we went back to the hostel, found that Rommi was awake and went out to eat dinner. I had a wonderful lasagna, Rommi the same an Dan had a really good looking Paraguayan fish.