Rain, Rain, Rain!!!!

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  Encarnacion, Paraguay
Thursday, September 29, 2005

So off to the bus station we went after laughing at Paul trying to get through the turnstiles with the bags! Hee hee! So sympathetic! It was great to get on a local bus again and during the day as well as most of our recent journeys had been overnight so we hadn´t got to see much of the scenery inbetween places! The Paraguayan countryside is lovely and green and pretty similar to home really with lots of rolling hills and sheep of course! It was a very lovely journey and we arrived late afternoon, found a hostel and went for a quick wander!

Encarnacion is located on the opposite side of the river from Posadas in Argentina and we strolled down to the riverside to see the nightlights of Posadas beckoning from afar! We strolled through the market which was closing up for the day and settled down for dinner (Bori Bori and the giggling waiter!) with the locals watching the footie! Nice!

We went to bed listening to the start of a huge storm which hadn´t finished in the morning unfortunately...it was still chucking it down when we woke up so we decided to head North up to the Brazilian border and try to make it to Foz de Iguacu that day rather than traipsing around the ruins getting our bags drenched! Booooo! Damn you weather! I felt very popular trying to buy bus tickets surrounded by about 7 men who all cheered after I left the office....not sure if they´d just ripped me off massively or I had toilet paper stuck to my shoe! What do you reckon????? Fighting through the hustle & bustle, we jumped on another local bus and managed to bag the 2 seats in front of the only drunks on the bus who consequently spent the whole bus journey shouting at each other, getting told off for smoking, wandering up and down the bus or stopping the bus to go for a wee! Highly amusing! I chatted to a nice local fireman (oh yes ladies!) who happened to know someone in the Lincolnshire Fire Brigade...how bizarre eh and we finally arrived at Cuidad del Este at about 6 but had managed to miss the last bus to the Foz! As it happened though, we bumped into a French guy from Rennes bizarrely which is where I spent my year out at Uni and we talked a taxi driver into taking us across the border for a similar price to the bus! Nice! A nice, easy border crossing with the passport man laughing at our photos...especially Paul´s...could it be something to do with a receding hairline??? and my first words in Portuguese! Obrigada which means ´thankyou´! WOW!

After being followed from the bus station by a hotel tout and strategically jumping into the lobby of a posh hotel to try & avoid him, we eventually found the hotel we were looking for...the Hotel del Rey...pure luxury for us with clean, white, sparkling sheets, cable TV and a nice bathroom!! We ended up having a posh dinner as well in Buffalo Bronco´s where they bring around skewers with lots of different types of meat on them and a yummy salad bar...the harpist was eyeing up the spare ribs so we suggested him playing the harp with one hand and eating a rib with the other much to his amusement! Where there´s a will, there´s a way!

So yes our first night in Brazil wasn´t at all what we expected! Posh hotels, posh dinner and a huge credit card bill to match...which we soon found out was to be the theme throughout Brazil...especially the spending on the credit card bit!

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