| ciudad del
este (paraguay)
--Jun 3, 2005
On our third day in Iguazu Falls, we decided
to dip our toes into the third country that touches borders here,
Paraguay. To claim that we visited Paraguay proper would be a
stretch; we ducked briefly into the shopping extravaganza that
is Ciudad del Este, just across the border. (For Americans, a
good analogy here would be visiting Tijuana.)
|
just over the
border into Paraguay |
Forty-five minutes (and one transfer) on the
bus and we find ourselves about a kilometer from the border where
the traffic comes to a complete standstill on the long bridge
into Paraguay. The scene is out of a movie. It’s dusty and
hot and endless old cars sputter black exhaust next to our rickety
bus. We’re on a highway but people are sitting in chairs
in the outside lanes selling things like bread, fruit and stereos.
Tiny mopeds are weaving through traffic speeding tourists towards
the border (a much faster choice than our mode of transport) and
there are pedestrians running on the freeway.
It looks like people are running *from* something,
but they’re actually running *to* Paraguay like they’re
planning to loot the city. It’s still early in the day but
in the opposite direction, people are already returning with enormous
piles of stuff (a middle-aged man hunched over with a stack of
20 DVD players tied together on his back, a woman pushing a wheelbarrow
full of… well… we’re not really sure, something).
The traffic seems hopeless so we jump out of the bus to join the
chaos on foot.
When we make it to the border, we have our
passports ready. But there is no need. There’s a guy with
a rifle in a green uniform, but he seems much more interested
in chatting with random drivers than anything else. We’re
not even sure where the border actually is, but we can tell by
the crazy product-filled streets that we’re in.
|
getting in
and out takes a while |
Things are cheap here, and lots of Brazilians
and Argentineans (and tourists) come here to shop (or carry back
motherloads of goods to re-sell). And there’s plenty to
choose from. Huge 5-story complexes with names like “America”
and “China” and more street stalls than you can possibly
explore. Real Gucci in slick, air-conditioned stores and fake
Gucci right outside on the street. Lots of (fairly) new technology
is for sale along side mountains of watches and piles of soccer
jerseys (we bought some for our nephews). We also bought some
blank DVDs from a store that seemed to be exceptionally happy
that we could speak a tiny bit of Mandarin (most of the stores
and stalls seemed to be staffed or owned by Paraguayans, but there
were plenty of other ethnicities represented). We’re not
quite sure why everything here is so cheap (perhaps somebody out
there can write in to tell us). Perhaps they get some mighty tax
breaks since they’re a land-locked country. Surely this
whole city couldn’t have “fallen off the back of a
truck.”
After many hours of wandering in the pandemonium,
we finally decided that we’d seen enough. We climbed in
to a bus marked “Brazil” that had no estimated leaving
time and sat down next to a woman carrying her everyday groceries
and a man with a gigantic bag of stereos. We all waited in the
heat, dust and silence for the long line of buses to cross back
over the border.
 |
