1 taxi ride, 2 Gringos, 3 Countries .....and a crash.

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Our plane landed at Ciudad del Este(CDE) airport, we exited the flight leaving most of our fellow passengers on board continuing on to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Initially I intended to stay the evening at CDE, but a combination of a lack of decent accomodation and some horror stories about the city changed our minds. The new improved plan was to catch a taxi and drive smoothly over the border to Puerto Iguasu, Argentina. Well in theory.......

We found a taxi driver happy to drive us, though he told us the fee would be $60.00AUS , which I thought was a bit steep. Fortunately his taxi was not an old clapped out Mercedes, but this time we had the relative comfort of a fairly new looking Toyota sedan. The driver drove it like it was stolen, pretty soon we were doing 130kph in an 80kph zone. This in itself was a bit of a worry, due to the fact that seatbelts aren´t compulsory to wear in South America, therefore many don´t work, and sure enough we found ours were unserviceable.

We continued to tear down the freeway at excessive speed, until we hit town, where the trafiic slowed to a crawl. We made it over the famous CDE bridge, where all the Argentinians and Brazilians cross over to Paraguay to purchase dodgy black market goods. We saw heaps of people heading back to their respective countries with huge sack loads of goods on their backs, hoping to sell whatever they had purchased for next to nothing, at a 500% profit.

We got to the Parguayan Immigration office and had our passports stamped with the appropriate exit stamp. The guy behind the desk shared with us that he had a gun held to his head by a disgruntled customer a few days previously, evidentally because he wasn´t processing the exit stamps quick enough. This was enough to confirm my decision not to stay at CDE was totally justified. It really is a wild west sort of town.

We travelled a few kilometres and before we knew it we were now in Brazil. We stopped at their Immigration Office and got our requisite entry stamps in our passports. There was no mention of any gun toting dramas there, much to Dom´s relief.

Next stop Argentina, which we were told was only about 15km away. We continued on with our journey, probably travelling about 100kph in another 80kph zone. Suddenly I saw a motorcyclist tearing out of a side street and he clearly hadn´t seen us in our turbo charged taxi.

This was not looking good, a collision was looking imminent. The taxi driver saw the motorcyclist at the last moment and accelerated heavily, swerving to the right to avoid a head on smash. Dom didn´t see a thing until the motorcyclist decided to say a very personal hello to her by squishing his face against her passenger window as he and the bike struck the taxi with a fair bit of momentum. I turned around to see the rider and the bike land behind us in a crumpled heap. I honestly thought he was dead as he wasn´t wearing a helmet, which along with seatbelts is the norm in South America.

The taxi driver screeched to a halt and got out, as did I, as I felt he should have some kind of back up in case the locals got a bit aggresive, after all it wasn´t his fault. I told Dom to wind up her windows and if anything should happen to me that she could now drive my brand new XR-6 sedan sitting in the garage back home in Australia.

Fortunately, the motor cycle rider wasn´t dead as he rather gingerly got up and hobbled over to the nearest footpath. I think he must have have had a guardian angel looking after him as he didn´t have anything visably wrong with him apart from a dislocated knee cap. I picked up his crumpled looking road trail bike and wheeled it over to the footpath. A heated argument was taking place between the taxi driver and the motorcyclist, whilst a crowd of locals, mostly young Brazilian guys, were beginning to gather around taking an interest in proceedings. There was mention of the police attending, which I thought under the circumstances was a pretty wise move. After a while the argument reached a bit of an impasse and the taxi driver looked at me for a bit of assistance. All I could do was point at the motorcyclist who was rubbing his kneecap and grimacing and say ¨Tu es....Loco!¨.
That must have done the trick as all of a sudden the motorcyclist apologised, there was no further talk of police attending and everyone sort of vanished into thin air. The great white gringo had spoken!!!

We went back to the taxi and inspected it for damage, fortunately it consisted mainly of scraped paint and only minor panel damage, not too bad considering how fast both vehicles were travelling. The taxi driver was spewing as he didn´t have any insurance and neither did the bike rider, but he was also relieved that we had made it out of a potentially sticky situation. He apologised to us both for involving us in the crash.

We made it to the Brazilian border and got a new exit stamp and we were asked if we had anything to declare.....I wanted to say we had almost killed a man on a bike but decided to keep quiet. I have seen to many of those ´Banged Up Abroad´shows on Foxtel to know that sometimes a moments silence is way better than a couple of years in a Brazilian Prison.

We travelled at a far more respectable speed to the Argentian border, where the taxi was searched for Drugs, contraband and dead bodies, before we were allowed to enter. Ten minutes later we were sitting in our hotel room in Puerto Iguasu, sipping on a cold drink and thinking that was $60.00 well spent. The taxi driver certainly earn´t his money that´s for sure.

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