Three in One

After our trip to the Brazilian falls, we decided to return by public transport. So, we got a bus from the park to the center of Foz. One idea was to look around town and perhaps find a Portuguese phrase book (B.T.W. we have decided to go to Rio de Janeiro for a few days and see if we like Brazil.)

After seeing Foz through the bus windows, we decide that maybe we'd go to Paraguay instead. (Actually, I wanted to do this all along, but T wasn't desperate to and didn't see the point - women!) So, we found the bus to Paraguay and got onto it.

After ten minutes or so on the bus, we got in a big queue to cross the border over a pretty stunning bridge over the Parana river.

There seemed to be a new type of traffic on the road: the motorcycle taxi. Given the congestion and queues - this didn't seem such a bad option. If you don't value your life very much I suppose.

We got off the bus on this big, wide street and wandered around some shops. I still harboured some desires for a Nintendo DS lite and I still owed T a birthday present (nearly 3 months ago). She fancied an iPod.

Lots of haggling and stuff later, we knocked the DS on the head, but got a good deal on a 30G iPod. Unfortunately, my credit card didn't work with their system, so we had to go and get cash.

We left the arcade with the shop in it into a downpour. The streets were, basically, torrents of water and the rain was wetter that the waterfalls nearby.

After alot of searching and asking, we finally tracked down an ATM where I got out a million and a half Paraguayan ibbles (or whatever that are called). I hoped that was about 140 quid. We will see :-)

We found a bridge over the road/river on the way back and returned to the shop to pay for an iPod.

All we had to do now was get back to Argentina.

We wandered across the street (the rain was pretty light by this point) and the first bus said 'Argentina' on it. We hopped on and the driver made sure we knew we were going to Argentina. Many others got on with their Paraguayan purchases (Paraguay has no sales tax and seems to have stocks of things that simply aren't easily available in Argentina). Fluffy bedcovers seemed to be unusually popular. As were umbrellas - but only in batches of three for some reason. Perhaps there is a '3' related umbrella based superstition - who knows.

Although there is a bridge between Paraguay and Argentina, this bus went from Paraguay to Brazil to Argentina. Nobody was allowed to get off in Brazil (except the chap who was taken off by customs, much to the displeasure of his missus). Border controls were pretty much a formality. No entry stamps to Brazil and no sign whatsoever that Paraguay cared about anything.

Thus ended our three country trip. Brazil we are to explore more fully soon (as fully as one can explore a country that size in a couple of days) and Paraguay is, well, wet.