ari&andrew-aroundtheworld: Please Mr Paraguay.....let us in?!

With the excitement of the Iguazu Falls out of the way it was time to try our luck at getting across the border from Brazil into Paraguay. So we rocked up at the immigration desk, confident as can be....well, maybe a little nervous. The guy serving us was soooooo Spanish.....Juan Carlos Gomazalez. He flicked through Andrew's passport but alas no entry visa. Hmmmm.....he looked a little confused to start with but with the help of our truck driver Graeme, he began to understand the "situation".

After a few colourful exchanges & a lot of gesticulating it became clear that they had reached an agreement. We were to slip $40US each, stealthily under the back of his computer screen without drawing attention to ourselves & he would process a "transit visa". He was actually a good bloke & we had a bit of a laugh as he punched away at his computer. There was a tense moment when the boss looking guy came over to see what was taking so long but the call of the plate of donuts on his desk was too strong & he retreated to them quickly. So after about 10 minutes & $80US, we were officially allowed into Paraguay.....on strict instructions to tell no-one at the other borders that we paid any money! What money??? The funniest part of all was that had we been able to get our visas at the embassy beforehand, it would have cost us $10US more than we paid Juan Carlos...bless him :)

There is not much to say about Paraguay as we only spent 4 days there & most of that was just to get us to Argentina. We spent a couple of nights in Ascunsion, the capital city of Paraguay. It is quite a nice town with some pretty colonial buildings but that is not what I will remember it for........I will remember the TAX FREE SHOPPING!! As it happens our small point'n'shoot camera had shit itself about a week earlier (well Andrew sat in it) so we were in the market for a new camera & I wanted an external hard drive to back up all our trip photos. We had heaps of fun shopping for bargains & ended up saving about 35% on the price of what we bought.....& my hard drive is pink :) Ascunsion also had really good sangria.....by the giant jug full!!

From Ascunsion we headed to Trinidade (yes, we have already been Trinidade - in Brasil!!) & the infamous (literally) Jesuit Ruins. We had been warned that the Jesuit ruins were - in a word - crap! So with the anticipation of their crapiness driving us on we headed out to see them. We were pleasantly surprised. They weren't crappy at all....plus we ran around them & did handstands & carried on like school kids so that probably helped. The ruins are only a couple of hundred years old but with their reputation probably preceeding them we found ourselves the only people there so it was fun.