Foz do Iguaçu: Sunday Afternoon

After our trek to Argentina,we were pretty tired, and still very broke. When we got back to the hostel, Luis and Miguel invited us to eat with them, so we made spaghetti and pigged out. That morning, Luis had told us he had a surprise for us, and to meet him at the hostel at 3:00. So, at 3, we were ready in the lobby. I was a little wary, because he wouldn't tell us where we were going. He did tell us not to bring bags or purses, just our passports (!) and cameras. Please don't tell me how naive it was to go along with this scheme.

Luis took us first to a bus, then to a taxi, and then to the Brazilian Border Control. We got our passports stamped there, and Luis said, "Let me hold on to your passports, because I look less like a tourist than you and I can keep them safe." I had my money belt, so I declined, but Diane had only a pocket, and I was doubly nervous when she handed over her papers.

We took a taxi across a bridge, at which point Luis said, "We are in Paraguay! You are illegal. Don't look suspicious, and hide from police."

Luis took his two Germanic charges to a crazy bus stop:

And to an even crazier bus:All the buses were like that: red and orange, green and yellow, or red and purple--any color scheme you can imagine, with swirls and stripes and people hanging out the windows. The inside was amazing:

I think the bus drivers decorate their own buses, and ours had milti-colored curtains at every window and fringe at the front. Diane swears our driver was sitting in a beach chair.

We rode the bus for a suspiciously long time and got off in a quiet neighborhood. I was completely stumped about where Luis was taking us, but after trusting him this far, we didn't have much choice but to tag along after him. Walking through the residential streets I was surprised how different Paraguay looked from Brazil. The difference between the houses was appalling, with this one one side of the street:

And this on the other:

We also witnessed this one-on-one soccer game:

Luis seemed to know lots of people in the neighborhoods we passed, which was somewhat reassuring. Neighborhoods turned into fields, pavement turned into dirt, and eventually we reached our destination: the Beautiful Secret Waterfalls of Somewhere in Paraguay.

I started to feel bad for not trusting Luis, when the whole time he planned to show us these falls. On the way home, he introduced us to some friends of his, and we drank coke and ate these delicious fruits that I hope to find again someday.

The most exciting part of Paraguay was leaving it. We had to sneak out past the police, or we would go to a Paraguayan jail and pay a huge fine. So, in our Experienced-Spies kind of way, we hunched our shoulders and put our hoods on, and ran past border control. Fool proof! Luckily, we made it back across the bridge and safely into Brazil again. And that is the story of my trip to Paraguay.