Fuzzy and farcical in Foz

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Thursday. Up early again to catch the 7:30 a.m. bus to Foz do Iguacu, which our Chaco busmate Sondra (a young Dutch woman on her way to three months on a Brazilian dairy farm, after an advanced degree in soils science!) had put us on to. Good thing, too, because most of the buses go to the Argentina side and we didn’t want to be bothered with that. A six-hour trip rolling through southern Paraguay, so much greener than Chaco that it’s rather beautiful despite the obvious poverty here. With shades like PEI’s: rich red earth, green hills, blue skies. Villages strung along the route, chipa stands (we bought some, but never again found any like those at the station at Encarnacion), and towns, inevitably heralded and exited via roundabouts. All the way to Ciudad del Este, a dirty though lively town that’s sort of the Wal-Mart of the three-corner region, a cheap place to buy stuff. Sure enough, as we approached the bridge crossing into Brazil, there was a chaotic bazaar and plenty of street merchants, including those urchins ready to wipe your windshield for a few guaranis. We stepped off to get our exit stamps, only to run into Lynn Miller (the MC USA stewardship guy), of all people, who amazingly remembered Jeff from a brief visit to PMC about 15 years ago.

Then it was across the broad, broad river (Paraguay? Parana?) to Brazil, where we got our entry stamps and a look at a different economy. Instantly, things looked better: better roads, better transit, cleaner streets, newer buildings. Amazing how borders can change so much.

Soon, we were at the Rodiviaria, as the central bus terminal is called in Brazil. Sondra and we took a cab to the station for the local buses, where she grabbed one for her hostel out near the national park, and we walked the block and a half to the Hotel del Rey, which turned out to be much nicer than expected - a spotless white bath with nice fixtures (oh, and the opportunity to enjoy both heat and water pressure in the shower!) and a matrimonio and TV. And English speaking staff who actually seemed friendly. After freshening up a bit, we popped down to the local livraria, helpfully pointed out by the staff, and picked up the next best thing to a Portuguese phrasebook, which turned out to be not terribly useful (it describes English grammar in Portuguese, and then Portuguese grammar in … Portuguese!). A stroll through the town took us to a nice vantage point over the river and back down Brazil St., the main shopping district, where we found a churro seller who stuffed hers with your choice of dulce de leche (doce de leite in Brazil) or chocolate. Yum! Another thing to get hooked on.

We finished off the night with dinner at a churrascaria called Bufalo Branco, one of those places where there’s a buffet with salads and vegetables, and the waiters ply you all night long with skewers of various grilled meats. It would have been funny enough to find ourselves, on our first night in Brazil, being serenaded by a harp-and-guitar duo playing “My Way” (actually, they were quite excellent!), had we not been handed an English translation of the menu that had us chortling all night long. Among the choice cuts we were to be offered were "rump," “cup of rump,” “hump,” “spitted sausage” and, the piece de resistance, “turkey testicles.” Never did see the latter (not sure one could), but the food was pretty darn good. However, we are definitely beefed out for a while. And loaded with innuendos that arise at the oddest moments to make us bust out laughing. Yikes.

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