Interesting bus ride out of Paraguay

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  Ciudad Del Este, Paraguay
Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Today Andrea's father, who works at Itaipu, managed for someone to pick me up and take me to the hydroelectric plant.  It's the hydroelectric plant that generates the most energy in the world, I think they said it now achieved around 14 million killowatt hours or something crazy like that.  I don't think it's the largest anymore, which is the Chinese one that I caught a glimpse of last year during my Asian trip...

The tour was really interesting, with a video that explained the 10 year building process, and then we went to the panoramic view spot, and checked out some nice views  of the dam/hydroelectric plant.  Then we drove near all the huge engines, and over the dam, where we could see the *vast* lake that's been created behind the dam, to harness the water into energy.

Anyways, after getting a ride back to town, we went to the bus station to buy my ticket to Sao Paolo.  That cost 230,000 Guaranies (around 58 dollars).  Oh, but it really sucked when I took out money out of the atm, they charged me about 25,000 guaranies (around 6 or 7 dollars?) which I think is ridiculous, but oh well...  Then,after lunch, they took me back to the bus station totake my bus.  They were all so friendly and nice, and Celeste, Andrea's mom, even packed me a nice lunch sandwich for the bus.

The bus left around 3pm from the station.  It was interesting, since I got my stamp nice and quickly, but then some agents got on the bus, searching through random people's handbags.  Good ole discrimination against Peruvians came out to light, when they made me get off the bus and checked through all of my stuff quite carefuly.  The guy finally cut to the chase and asked me if I had drugs... It went kind of as follows...

Him: "Tienes drogas?"/ "Do you have drugs"(this after he had searched every nook and cranny of my bags)
Me: "Obvio que no" / "Obviously not."
Him: "Hay mucha droga en Peru." / "There's a lot of drugs in Peru."
Me: "Si, en todos lados hay" / "Yeah, there's a lot of drugs everywhere."

I get back on the bus, roll my eyes at the ladies sitting in front of me and say.
"Since I'm Peruvian, I obviously have drugs on me..."
She says.. "But you don't right?"
I stare at her.. "Of course not..."

Around 5.45pm we still haven't crossed the Brasilian side of the bridge (10 minutes away from the bus station).  It seems a Brasilian girl was trying to smuggle lots of (way cheaper / tax free ) merchandise into Peru. She wasn't on anyone's top friends list, that's for sure.

After we finally passed, I was able to relax, and was quite happy to find out I had the two seats for the rest of the journey... continued in tomorrow's entry..

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