Driving to Brazil, our final country!

We were up for breakfast at 6.30am and ready to leave an hour later. We had 400 kilometres to go today to get to our destination in Brazil. This also meant a border crossing. As always, we had no idea how long this would take.

Mark was struggling almost as soon as we set off this morning and spent most of the drive standing up in the aisle to try to get some relief from the pain. All in all, it was a pretty miserable day for him, especially in temperatures of around 40 degrees! The roads were good, though, and we made better progress than we expected. We stopped for a lunch break on the Paraguay side of the border so that we could use up our remaining guarani.

We reached the border in the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este (Spanish for 'eastern city') at around 4pm. It was chaos! The city is the second largest in Paraguay. It sits on the Parana River which forms the border between Paraguay and Brazil. The two countries are joined by the Friendship Bridge. Ciudad del Este is a commercial city and is one of the largest free-trade zones in the world. Its tax-free status attracts many Brazilians and Argentines to the city. This border is purportedly one of the easiest in South America to get across, with few checks being carried out. Our only hold-up really was due to the sheer volume of traffic.

We made it into Brazil (country number 70 for me) at around 5.30pm. From the border, it was just a short drive to our campsite in Foz do Iguacu. It would be home for the next three nights to give us time to explore Iguazu Falls, one of the highlights of the entire trip.Read more