Been taking public bus everywhere and it stops at border control for you to pass through immigration - well I should say it stops at Argentian side - Brazil don´t appear to be bothered probs because Brazil is sooo much more expensive than Argentina.
So given our good fortune with buses in Brazil and Argentina we thought we´d do the same to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay - ohmygosh! This is the dodgiest border crossing ever - so much stuff was blatantly being smuggled over - one guy had 4 bags he stuffed under various seats and the bridge was rammed with buses, cars, motorbike taxis and people. This bus didn´t wait for us as we went into the Paraguain immigration to get stamped - luckily Brits are okay most places in South America but Aussies and Americans have to pay nearly everywhere.
So we go to find a bus to Itaipu - we find one going right way - don´t appear to be buses going all the way and we walk the last mile on the road - we must have stood out like sore thumbs - we didn´t see any other foreigners all day(if you discount the brazillians and argentinians).
anyway we arrive at this huge complex and go inside and it turns out Paraguay is an hour behind Brazil and we have 3 hours until the next tour. This place was so Dharma Institute (eg. Lost) it was scary. The propoganda and what they would like you to think about the Dam is interesting. It´s a huge structure and it´s great that it provides so much electricity from a renewable non-polluting source (25% of all of Brazil´s power and 75% of Paraguay´s) but they have flooded such a large area and if you look beyond what they tell you they lost a lot of habitat and animals and have created a huge mosquito pool.
The film and bus tour were archaic but as no one spoke any english and our spanish is still limited we probably missed the worst of it.
all in all - it wasn´t really worth it just for the stamp :-) but the border towns really were an eye opener but too dodgy to take any pictures.
Tomorrow we fly to Buenos Aires - Bye Brazil!!
x
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