Simon, Tristan, Hannah, Alex, Matt, Emma and myself struggled out of bed to join an equally shattered Antonio for a jaunt across the border, without stopping for immigration since we’d need visas, to pop into Paraguay.
The sole purpose of the hop across for the locals is the cheap shopping. You can get cheap electronics and anything fake you can think to make. We wandered for a couple of hours in the intense heat, waved off the hawkers, avoided the guy selling tasers, bought knock-off
Boca Juniors tops and generally labored with our hangovers until we could go home.
No stamp in the passport, but hey, we did get to “experience” Paraguay’s answer to Tiajuana…isn’t that on everyone’s bucket list?
In the evening we hit the road to Paraty. This involves a bus for 18 hours to Sao Paulo, thank goodness again for sleeping pills and Tomás securing a full-cama upgrade for those of us who wanted one. Then waiting for a couple of hours for our transfer which is stuck in the unbelievable traffic that only a city of 20+ million people can muster for the 6 hours to Paraty. As I write this on the transfer bus we are winding up and down and around a twisting road through little towns along the coast, catching glimpses of beach, sand and ocean melding together under a blanket of unseasonal mist. It’s bizarre, the difference between the sapping swelter of Iguacu and now drizzly fog…and still all around is green, green, green.