Blogs from Paraguay, South America - page 4

Geo: -22.5472, -55.7333...What's the Elevator Pitch once again?...Yep...It's a friendly border town where brazilian druglords greed each other...Oops...how did I end up in such a craphole?...Hmmh...let's see...weel there was a bus from Campo Grande leaving to...just forget the excuses...Besides druglords...It's loaded with those lost Chinese souls who run their business side by side copying each other and competing for whom...The customer...but..yes, Brazilians do their shopping runs from Sao Paulo and other rich cities to buy up the newest rubish chink technology, it comes with the usual guarantee of being the lowest quality any technical item could probably be...Hopefully the toaster you just bought will last for the first few slices of bread...I was hanging around a few days simply inhaling the crappy experience...Well, to be honest, I was rather forced too. Upon... read more

Being within a few kilometers of Paraguay when I visited Iguazu Falls was enough to spark my interest in this landlocked country of which I knew very little. It took another 24 hour coach trip to reach the capital, Asuncion - we initially retraced the route back to Iguazu, then crossed the Parana river into the Paraguayan border city of Ciudad del Este, where were immediately immersed in rows of shopping centres, which are frequented by Brazillians and Argentinians for their cheap electrical goods. The remainder of the journey was mostly through flat farmland (Paraguay is 1 and 2/3 times bigger than the UK, but with only a tenth of the population). The coach was boarded on occasions by people selling "chipa", toroidal shaped breads with cheese and aniseed - a Paraguayan speciality of which I ... read more

15th March ’13 A short side trip to Paraguay Today we took the local bus across the border to Cuidad del Este in Paraguay, well it seemed a shame to be so close and not go and have a look. Amazingly we got on the bus a few yards from our hotel and an hour later we were in a different country! The journey should have only taken 30 minutes but the traffic was mad and made madder by six lanes trying to get into two! About half the passengers got off and just walked it, and it was a long way but they still beat us. We crossed over the Parana River on the Friendship Bridge and it was hard to tell one country from the other by the scenery but once we passed immigration ... read more

Geo: -27.1392, -55.7252The bus ride proved remarkably unevenful. The bus didn't start at Igazu but arrived from somewhere else to go on to Posadas so our seats had already been in use and were a bit messy with crumbs etc but the were comfotable enough for a 5 hour ride. The bus stopped in various little towns along the way, each of which had its own mini bus station. And lunch was provided - unappetising cheese/ham/salami sandwiches, a piece of cake and fizzy orange squash! Our fellow travellers were young back packers, the French couple we'd met going to the falls, a scruffy young English couple travelling non stop to Bolivia and then up to Costa Rica to teach on spec and lots of locals getting on and off, families and individuals.The bus station in Posadas ... read more

Ponte Internacional da Amizade, manhã do dia 26 de dezembro. Passado o Natal, começam as promoções. É hora dos movimentos migratórios rumo aos menores preços. Ou, em Foz do Iguaçu, é hora de cruzar a ponte em busca das barganhas paraguaias. Assim, mal dera 8h da manhã e lá estávamos nós – eu, a mãe e minha irmã Duda – em uma van prestes a cruzar a ponte. Mas nosso objetivo não eram os eletrônicos, perfumes, bebidas nem nada disso. Era simplesmente matar a curiosidade, e ver com nossos próprios olhos o inferno que nos era descrito como Ciudad Del Este. Segundo os relatos que ouvira de quem já tinha passado por lá, tratava-se de um local feio, sujo, desorganizado e perigoso. Uma espécie de enorme camelódromo, onde se podia encontrar de tudo um pouco e ... read more