The Paraguay Adventure!

 My escorts to Paraguay: Luis and his wife Alice and their son Luigi.

                            

Kristian´s parents Marizette and Murilo and Luigi again.

Kristian and his girlfriend Karolyne.

Kristian's friend Luis and his wife Alice, picked me up from FISK for our trip to Paraguay. First we dropped off my HP notebook to a friend of his who has a computer repair shop and he asked me how many times it had crashed. He said he could put a new hard drive in it for $100, but thought that I should buy either an Acer or a Toshiba in Paraguay.

Paraguay is apparently a duty free type place for buying products cheaply, but they don´t take credit cards, only American cash. So, we ran around trying to get American money. First had to find an ATM to withdraw Brazillian reais. Then to see his father who works at a money exchange and get $US.

Then, drive a little ways to get into a long line of chaotic traffic to get to the border. They have official mototaxis, which are 125cc or 250cc motorcycles with a driver in a yellow vest and a passenger who would be crazy enough to get onto a bike with a person they don´t know and who drives like a madman, weaving through lanes of traffic. They are very dangerous, but cheap and fast, and popular.

Took us an hour to get across. No border check, no passport check! The city in Paraguay, Ciudad Del Leste, is a madhouse of shops, shoppers, traffic and hustlers. Found a place to park in a garage and then took off on foot. We walked a long way dodging traffic, pedestrians and hagglers until we got to the shop where I purchased the Toshiba NB305 notebook that I am currently working on. Then they wanted to buy a few things, diapers for their baby Luigi, a new purse and plumbing fixtures. That required a lot more walking and dodging. The shops are very strange, in that, you look at your product, then line up in a different area to purchase it and get a ticket, and then join another line to pick it up. (A bit like the old Consumer´s Distributing).

All of this took several hours. But, then came the fun! After walking a long way to find the car again, we had to getting to the traffic that winds and curls around the city and all the narrow, congested streets. As we were putting along we were accosted by persistent young squeegy kids, and then Luis was talking to a man who suddenly was putting money in Luis´s hand. I didn*t know what was happening. Turns out he was an uniformed policeman who told Louis ¨If I send you that way, it will take eight hours to get to the border, or if you pay 10 reais you can go down that street and it will take two hours!¨ The money he put in Luis´s hand was change for a larger note that Luis paid. This happened to us four times on our route to the crossing! The other times were by uniformed cops and little kids operating on their behalf. It cost about $16US to apparently save about seven hours.

In the long run, it took us about an hour to get through the throngs. It was a bit tense and unnverving. As we crossed the border, Luis said, don´t look at the cops, and showed me the long, long, long line of pedestrians who were being checked. Again, luckily we sailed through without a passport check. Strange experience, but now I have a laptop again! Although, you may have noticed that I can't find the apostrophe or the quotation marks.

In the late afternoon, Kristian took me to watch his band practise. He plays guitar and sings in a band called Sabanna (see if you can find that one Peter!) that plays rock music. That was fun and they were quite good.

In the evening, we all went to the home of one of the family´s friends. Kristian´s dad has worked with another man named Bruno for thirty something years. They work for a language school called FISK. As a result their families are very close. One of Bruno´s daughters is going to have a baby on Friday and was throwing a party to celebrate. There were about 25 people, quite a few who spoke English, because of their ties to the school. Bruno, in particular was very interested in talking to me about teaching and traveling. Really a fun, comfortable evening. Good food and company.

Unfortunately I don´t have any pictures of the Paraguay adventure because I was told not to bring a camera because it might be stolen or the border police might think I bought it there.