An afternoon in Paraguay

If you are right next to Paraguay, why not hop over for a bit to expand your passport stamp collection? After visiting the Brazilian side of the Iguazu Falls, we hopped on a bus into Foz du Iguacu, onto another bus to the Bridge of Friendship and made our way into Paraguay by foot across the bridge. It felt quite strange entering a country like this, in addition to not emigrating from Brazil since we never immigrated. On the Paraguayan side, we got our passports stamped, although we could have also simply bypassed the immigration office and nobody would have stopped us.

The border town of Ciudad del Elste made a strange first impression on us. It is known for being a tax haven with a huge shopping district where you can buy everything for cheap. Commerce was everywhere, but not in a clean and fancy way but rather dirty and raunchy.

This was not our target destination however. We wanted to get to the Paraguayan side of the Itaipu dam - the second largest hydroelectric power plant in the world. We managed to hail down a bus to the terminal and then took a taxi to Itaipu, which was a completely different sight. Shiny buildings, acres of mowed lawns and a well maintained road network showed that this was a prestige project which generated lots of income.

Itaipu is a hydroelectric power plant that started as a joint project with Brazil in 1975. It sits right on the border of the two countries at the Rio Paraná. It generates 90 percent of the electricity for Paraguay and 15 percent of the electricity for Brazil, using 20 huge turbines - built by Siemens. Very impressive to say the least. We luckily arrived just on time for the last - and free - tour of the day, which started with a documentary about the plant and its construction (even with English subtitles) and finished with a bus ride across the dam.

Afterwards we headed back to Ciudad del Este and booked a bus straight back to Argentina. Unfortunately we were stuck in traffic at the border forever. Brazilians love to go shopping in the city and the border patrol wants to make sure that everything brought back from there is strictly for personal use. When we reached the border, the bus driver did not care to stop, and thus we ended up not getting our exit stamp. Oh well. If we ever get back to Paraguay, we might have some explaining to do...

🌎 Countries visited in one day: 3
🌁 Bridges crossed by foot to another country: 1
💵 Paraguayan bank notes withdrawn: 0
🛃 "Illegal" emigrations: 1Read more