Struggling through Paraguay
Yesterday we finally finished a rather complex and tiring week of travelling across this country called Paraguay…
After we had found out that there was a Dengue fever epedemic in the Pantenal area located in the south of Brasil, we decided to go to Paraguay instead. As the north of Paraguay also is affected by the same Dengue fever epedemic, we limited our visit to the south part of the country.
The idea was to travel in a straight line from the east to the west, by entering the country via Puerto Iquazu in the far north of Argentina and leaving Paraguay again at the border with Bolivia, in the southeast. This way we could get a good look at the country, in not too much time. It seemed a good plan, until we had a couple of reading sessions in our travel guides, which resulted in this very long story:
A first thing that was a little unexpected, was that Paraguay has almost no ATM´s outside its capital. Even most of the smaller cities don´t have them. So we couldn´t pin money everywhere. A little tricky, as we had to bring a lot of cash into the country, especially since Paraguay is the most corrupt country in world…
So we decided to skip the eastern part of the country and go to the capital first to get some cash. From there we would move to the western part of the country, onto the Bolivian border. So, one problem solved, and we still had a good plan.
But, then we found out that crossing the border from Argentina was not so easy, as there were no direct buses going from Puerto Iguazu to Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital.
We had to take a bus that first crosses the Argentinian/Brazilian-border, this bus then travels for 30 minutes through the Brazilian city Foz de Iquazu and it then crossed the river to Ciudad del Este, a Paraguayan city just across the border. There we had to go to the bus terminal to try to catch a bus to Asuncion as we didn´t want to stay in Ciudad del Este, as it is not known as one of the safest cities in the world…
After some more reading and asking around we found out that we didn´t need to get any passport stamps to travel through Brazil for 30 minutes. So we could stay in the bus after we got our exit stamp at Argentinian customs and go directly to the Paraguayan border. That was easy and good.
What was not so good, that we had to get off the bus at Paraguayan customs to get our passports stamped, and that the bus wouldn´t wait for us. We had to wait for the next bus. What was even worse, was that Ciudad del Este´s border crossing is pretty hectic as all sorts of people are trading stuff in the tax free zone over there, and there are lots of (maybe corrupt) police hanging around there too.
Luckily enough the Paraguayan people in the bus were very friendly and they helped to get us off the bus at the right spot (we had missed the tiny customs building). Even the police were very friendly: after we had gotten our stamps the policy told a bus driver to drive us to the bus terminal. At the bus terminal we quickly got on one of the many buses the Asuncion, the capital. So far, so good.
When we arrived in Asuncion at the bus terminal it was already getting a little darkish, so we quickly asked around if a bus was going to the city centre. Asuncion is also not known as one of the safest cities in the world and the bus terminal is a 45 minutes drive from the city centre….
We quickly found a bus for the city centre, so, as we normally do, we asked the bus driver to give us a signal when we would be near the main plaza. He said yes, so we waited for almost an hour, and just before we were going to ask if we had arrived yet, he realised we were still in the bus, quickly stopped next to another bus and told us to quickly change busses (all of this in very difficult to understand Spanish, as they speak a mix of Spanish and Guarani here, the old indian language).
We changed buses, and after some more talking and more language-difficulties the bus driver got us to the city centre, we got out and found a nice hotel just before dark. A good ending to a hectic day after all.
After having stayed a couple of days in Asuncion we decided to go to the deserted eastern part of the country. Here you can only find a couple of thousand Guarani people, and more than 30.000 ex-Dutch/German Mennonites (conservative christans), living in 3 big farming colonies/villages. We wanted to vist 1 or 2 of these villages, and then move on cross the border. A difficult task, we found out…
After some more reading and talking at the bus terminal, we found out we could take a night bus to one of the villages, Lomo Plata, so that was pretty easy.
But to go to the border from that village, you first had to take a bus in the morning to one of the other villages, Filadelfia, and then wait for another bus that leaves in the evening and takes you to the customs building at the border. After that you had to wait the whole night to catch another bus at 5 o´clock that would be coming through from Asuncion to take us across the border.
To make things more difficult we had to purchase the bus tickets at the bus terminal in advance, as the people of the bus company told us that you we couldn´t buy these tickets at the border crossing. So, we bought the tickets for the border crossing in advance, but with no departure date on them as it would be no problem to enter the bus without a reservation, they told us. So, it all seemed to be arranged, and we still had a solid, if not a little complex plan.
The night trip to Lomo Plate went very well, and after we had found out there was no reliable bus service on Sunday we waited till Monday to cross the border. After hurrying a little (the bus left half an hour earlier than they had told us the day before) we catched the morning bus to Fildalfia and waited there until the evening for the bus to the border crossing. Everybody we asked told us the bus would pick us up across the main hotel in the village, but the problem was that nobody knew when this bus was leaving. Something between 6 and 8 o´clock most people said…
While waiting for this next bus we spoke to an Australian family who told us they had met an Italian guy in the hotel who was going on the same trip with us. So, while waiting for the bus which still hadn´t arrived at 7 o´clock, we crossed the street to the hotel and met the Italian guy.
He said the bus terminal was close by (we didn´t know as nobody had told us, and since there also are no maps available of these Mennonite villages), so we walked to the bus terminal to see if there really was a bus going to the border in the evening. There was, but it only left a little later, at 9 o´clock. A cvouple of hours later we arrived at the border crossing, and the friendly customs people told us that the bus to Bolivia wouldn´t arrive at 5 o´clock, but would arrive earlier, at 2 o´clock. So that was good as we wouldn´t have to wait as long as we had expected.
After having waited 4 hours in the cold night, the bus arrived. It then became clear that the Italian guy, Enrico, was travelling with another bus company that would arrive an hour later at 3 o´clock. And we couldn´t go either with ´our´ bus, as the bus driver said we should have reserved for this night as the bus was completely full. He really wouldn´t take us with him, even though we had valid tickets. He even wouldn´t let us stand (this is normally no problem over here, but this time it was), but (strangly) he had exactly one place left for Martine if she wanted to come….
So, there we were, waiting again in the cold night, feeling a bit screwed by a sort of corrupt bus company.
We decided to wait, to try to get on the bus of the other company. When the other bus arrived Enrico explained to the bus driver that we had missed the previous bus, and that we wanted to come with them. That was no problem, but we had to purchase new bus tickets, as this bus was from a different company.
We did, as we didn´t want to spent anymore time waiting, travelling, and waiting again in another empty, dusty, boring Paraguayan village.
Shortly therefater we entered Bolivia and travelling again seems to go pretty smooth now, except for the first 1000 meters…
Just after crossing the border the (very old) bus we were driving in, broke down. The bus driver spent more than an hour fixing the drive shaft (some broken bolts or something), but after that it was only another hour before we had arrived on our destination, in a country which is probably more used to foreign travellers.
Jannis.
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