Breakfast in Brazil, Lunch in Paraguay, and Dinner in Argentina

This will not be the update (which I will let Emily write) about the Igauzu Falls, but more of an update about our 3 meals in three countries today.  After spending yesterday afternoon at the Brazilian side of the Iguazu Falls (the name of the town is Foz do Iguazu in the State of Parana) we woke up this morning had an enjoyable breakfast (our last) in Brazil.  We then decided to take a city bus over the river to the town of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay (which according to Lonely Planet is named after Paraguay´s late dictator).  It is quiet a fitting city to be named after a dictator.  There is absolutley no border control when you cross the bridge from Brazil.  The entire trip takes on about 10 minutes from when we got on until we got off.  There seems to be either at one time a border control/passport check area which looks like it was bombed out in a war or just was never finished being built.  But besides that the town in Paraguay lives up to its name as the most corrupt town in South America.

 A look at the dirtiness of Kabul, oh wait I mean Paraguay

The region of Paraguay is a tax free zone so many Brazilians, Argentinians, and foreigners go over there to buy cheap things.  The main street and most of the side streets look like an extremely dirty Arab Shuk.  Selling everything from socks to sunglasses.  Along the main street are also several ´´shopping centers´´ which are mainly just filled with electronics stores run by Arabs (I´m pretty sure most of them were Palestinian) that sell everything electronic from nice cell phones, to knock off iPhones, to stereos, etc.  Emily and I didn´t really need to buy anything so we kind of just went there for the experience and looked around for a bit.  I did want to try to find a decent Arab food place, but we didn´t really feel like wandering to much off the main street so we just ate some french fries (which for these purposes I will say was lunch) and decided to head back on a bus to Brazil.  Like I said there was no passport control or anything, not even police.  Evidently if you are planning on staying in Paraguay there is a small office near the bridge to get the proper paperwork done but as we were´t we just hopped on a city bus a headed back to Brazil.  Reentering Brazil also wasn´t to difficult.  If you have´t already been in Brazil you do need to get off and deal with passport control but if not just customes agent comes on the bus checks your bags and lets the bus go.

Entering Argentina!  Actually this is a flag from Iguazu, not the border crossing.

After this point we headed back to the hostel grabbed our bags and took another city bus to Argentina.  Which crossing the border took a little bit more time but was also pretty simple.  We took a bus to the border and because we were leaving Brazil for good we took care of getting exit stamps in our passports.  The bus driver didn´t wait for us as, Brazilians and Argentinians dont need to deal with it (although the driver gave us free bus vouchers for the next bus from that company).  We got on the next bus that came which drove us over the bridge to Argentina and we again had to get off the bus and go through passport control and customes checks.  This time as all citizens of all countries need to go through passport control in Argentina the driver waited for us.  After going through all the checks (and learning Americans as long as they cross a land border in to Argentina don´t need to pay $130 reciprocity) we headed to our hostel in the town of Puerto Iguazu, Misiones Province and enjoyed our third meal in three countries today (a nice buffet the hostel had).

Besides that we are off to see the Argentinian side of the Falls tomorrow and the day after that heading down to Buenos Aires (a beautiful 20 hour bus ride, though we hear busses in Argentina are amazing...free food, fully reclining chairs for only $15 more, working AC, clean, and all for half the price of the Brazilian busses which usually are the opposite.)