Welcome to the Wild Wild West
That was the feeling I had when we first arrived in Paraguay from Argentina. There weren´t even any border formalities for some reason for other, not that there were any in brazil either, only the argentinian customs seems to bother with stamping our passports, on other borders the busses just drive trough and don´t stop.
In Ciudad Del Este people were trying to cheat us into buying expensive tickets to asuncion from them when you only had to walk 30 feet to the buss company office and get them 30% cheaper, I guess the guys were disappointed that we couldn´t be cheated that easily.
The drive trough the country side was fun, the country side wash lush and beautifull now as it´s winter, I can´t imagine what it´s like in the summer when it´s 40 degrees celcius.
We arrived safely to Asuncion at about 6PM and got to our hotel which could do with a better heating as just about everything here, but was otherwise nice and clean and reasonably priced.
We spent the evening in a nice bar called "Britannia Pub" supposed to be an expat hangout, though we really didn´t see any westerners there we enjoyed a few liters of beer there and a huge platter of food for 17$ total, not bad.
Even with all that travel we did the day 20$ under budget which feels great after all that spending in argentina. I should say that our budget goal is 90$ a day for 2 persons, including all travel and sights. Which really isn´t that much when we usually just stay 2 to 3 nights in a place for about half of the journey.
Today Asuncion is nice and warm, you can wear a T-Shirt! We´ve been wandering around the town seeing just about all the sights, as there aren´t that many in the town worth mentioning, atleast according to our guide book. My bulging wallet is still in it´s place in my back pocket, I´m really wondering will it survive the whole trip, and no it´s not bulging with money, just receipts and stuff to make it look juicy, call this an empirical experiment into safety of South America.
Tomorrow we´ll cross the border again to Argentina and head to Salta for 2 nights before heading to Bolivia, which I´m really waiting for, it´s really a shame we didn´t plan for a Gran Chaco road trip but then again it´s known to take up to 7 days instead of the advertised 24 hours when the buses break down, well I guess we could survive that now, but imagine having that in the summer when the temperatures can reach close to 50 degrees celcius.
BTW. If you´re the guy who has been trying to call me at 4-6AM for the past few nights, please, send me an SMS, or maybe I should learn to shut down my mobile.
