Ciudad del Este is a big shopping area for people from Brazil and Argentina because it is significantly cheaper. Especially for electronics – I already explained how I experienced that first hand. If only this trip was a week or two earlier… We just went for a couple of hours...
Before realizing the dates of the mission trip to Peruti, I had arranged to go with the school to Uruguay for the day. So I got back Saturday night, went out with folks from the residence and turned around and woke up a few hours later to go to Uruguay. It was Colonia. The city with the oldest remains of the country. Cobblestone roads, old buidings, etc. Very pretty. It was very hot and sunny and there were few clouds, but it started to rain a little. I was confused and a little annoyed, but later we saw a beautiful rainbow and took some pretty cool pics. It’s crazy how common they are here and how we almost never see them in the states. I’m still waiting to find my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when I get there!
It’s cool how close the countries are together here and so it’s fairly easy to get from one to the other. It sucks though because as Americans we need Visas to go to some of them and sometimes it’s not cheap. I wish I had more time to just travel and explore, but it’s nice to have experienced a small part of what seems like a whole different world.
Transportation here is awesome. We took these pretty nice buses that were standard. Long distance travel is so common by bus here and so the buses need to be pretty comfortable. They serve food and wine is free (leading to some really funny conversations). The seats go back really far and they give you a blanket and pillow.
We took a boat to Uruguay (It was a 3 hr boat ride). There is supposedly a faster and fancier, but also more expensive boat that goes back and forth. It was like a mini cruise ship. They transport cars back and forth. There were these comfy plane-like seats, there were tables and chairs, a café, a shop for souvineers, and a mini arcade. I could live here…
On our way out of Paraguay, we were short for time because of traffic and we had to catch our bus back to Buenos Aires and so we took moto taxis over the border. They are these guys on motor scooters who hand you a helmet, you hop on the back and they weave through traffic to take you as far as you need to go. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was completely awesome and I lot of fun, but I have to admit I feared for my life.
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