City of the east

Trip Start Jan 17, 2008

141

186

Trip End Jun 30, 2009

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Flag of Paraguay Ciudad Del Este, Paraguay
Sunday, January 4, 2009

Our journey from Asuncion to Paraguay's second city, Ciudad del Este was long. We had chosen the cheapest company who plies the route, and their vehicle turned out not be a proper bus, but a minibus, and like in Vietnam, it was a case of the more the merrier, or the most amount of people we can fit into one space, so by the time we arrived in Ciudad there were over 40 people crammed into every nook and cranny of the bus, some sitting on peoples laps, others perched between seats etc. It took quite a while to get out of Asuncion as there had been a crash on the main "highway", the sad result was that there was a dead body lying on the road, with trainers sticking out from under one end of the blanket covering the corpse. The style of driving here is very agressive and most motorcycle drivers dont wear helmets so you can understand how this more than likely a common occurence.

On arrival at Ciudad del Este, the scene was very chaotic,the verge of the main road was taken over by stalls,most of them were oddly enough selling various types of inflatable paddling pools and rubber rings, which are obviously popular here (whats odd is that it is landlocked!)

the dam

. After settling in at the cheapest hotel we could find, (even Paraguay is not that cheap these days), we had a walk around, primarily our goal was to find somewhere we could eat at, we had heard that was a significant Asian communtiy in the city ( I have no idea how or why - how one day some people in China said "have you heard of that town Ciudad Del Este in Paraguay, lets emmigrate there and start a Chinese restaurant"), well, they did and the food was great, they even had pearl tea, we both love it for the little tapioca balls that you can suck up the extra large straw! Interestingly enough , just round the corner was a large mosque, not what you would expect in Paraguay, as I did not think there were many Muslims living here.
Our stay in Ciudad Del Este was only for 1 night, the town is situated on the border with Brazil, and to reach it, all you have to do is cross the Friendship bridge over the River Parana, however before we were crossing the river, we had anothee stop to make. The Itaipu dam was the worlds largest hydroelectric dam, until the Chinese built the Three gorges dam on the Yangtze river afew years back, the dam is a few kilometres out of town, we took a local bus out to the visitor centre, where they have guided tours, luckily for free (I like that word). There were varius groups of people waiting for the tour, we started chatting this guy who was with a big group of people. all the group were Germanic looking, with blond hair and blue eyes, all the men were wearing normal clothes, the women however were wearing very old fashioned and conservative long dresses, they looked a bit like Amish people that we had seen on TV etc

the dam1

. Anyway the man explained they are Mennonites, they speak a language called Plattdeutsch, which is a dialect of German, they work as farmers and live apart from the general Paraguayan community in a colony, in this particular colony, there are 5000 of them, they have their own schools and hospitals, basically a country within a country. How very interesting, We had never many any Mennonites before, so after an instructional video about the dam ( it was a little one-sided - all pros and no cons) , then we made our way by bus to the actual dam itself, from afar it looks big, you cannot appreciate how much water is on the over side of it , then you drive along the dam itself, the turbine generators which look small from far way loom over you when you are next to them, half belong to Brazil and the other to Paraguay. On reaching the top of the dam, only then can you appreciate how much water there truely is on the other side, the river Parana here is about 5 or 4 times as wide as the river Thames in London, no wonder that they generate so much power, 90% of Paraguay's needs, very ecologically sound, though on the other side of the coin, some villages had to be moved as their villages were flooded.
After our trip to the dam, we returned to the town and collected our bags from the hotel. We had some lunch at a Japanese restaurant in the centre of the city, they had salmon nigiri, so we ordered 12 pieces to share between the two of us! very tasty, and a surprise find in Cuidad del Este

the dam2

. We negtiotated with a taxi driver who agreed to take us over the border and into Foz De Iguacu. The crossing about of Paraguay was probably the shortest we have encountered on this entire trip, no queue whatsoever and we got into the car crossed over the bridge into Brazil. So at the Brazilian immigration, we queued up and were automatically given only 40 days into the country, we said we would like more time, and they told us that we would have to go to the Federal police and ask for more time. We were not too happy about this as we would have had to pay for this extension and show return flights infomation etc etc, especially as they had asked this Portuguese guy behind us in the queue how much time he wanted and granted him the 90 days he requested! Anyway on the journey from the border to the hostel (the price had to be renegotiated with driver enroute as driver actually understood where we wanted to go now) we decided to cross into Argentina and then re cross back into Brasil and ask nicely for 90 days this time before they stamp our passports.