We spent six nights in total in Paraguay. Went entered the country close to Igauzu Falls, after a bus journey of about an hour that passed briefly through Brazil. We crossed at a town called Cuidad del Este, which is a popular shopping town, with people crossing in for the day from Argentina and Brazil to buy cheap stuff. We were travelling with this guy called Hamish from New Zealand who we met at the hostel and wanted to go the same way as us. More about him later. Anyway we had to find immigration in the town to get our entry stamps then find our way to the bus station where we were immediately surrounded by people wanting to sell us bus tickets. Soon we were on a six hour journey to Asuncion, the capital.

The journey was relatively short compared to recent ones but it was a bit of a pain. There was aircon but it didn't work very well, would have been better to just open the windows. Also it was very crowded with people standing in the aisles, and constantly getting on and off selling stuff. Anyway we made it and got a taxi to a pension recommended by our trusty Lonely Planet. We ended up staying there three nights. It was an OK place run by an old lady. I spoke a lot of Spanish to her. She was nice but quite bossy about where we should go and what we should do. Also we had to bang on the door when we came back at night and she made us feel guilty about it.

There isn´t much to do in Asuncion, it is a small sleepy town and incredibly hot. We had a quick walk round the "sights". We ate some steak, prices were noticeably cheap than Argentina. One night we hit an "English" pub, which had pictures on the wall of typical English stuff like Marmite and Coleman´s mustard. Good place. On Halloween we bought some of the local spirit, which I believe is some kind of cane alcohol. Ridiculously cheap. After that we went to a Cuban club for an hour or so. The music and dancing was cool. We didn´t want to stay up too late because we had to wake up the old lady. Hamish was a strange guy, at first we thought he just a bit odd, but by the end we suspected he was a compulsive liar and a bit of a psycho. He´d day weird things like that his neighbour invented venison hunting and was a multi millionaire. We also found out he lied to us about his name and where he was from. Anyway we were glad when he decided to go back to Cuidad del Este because he fancied doing some shopping apparently. We moved on and few hours north to a small town called Concepcion.

It was a cool place, really chilled, not much going on. Dirt roads and horse and carts. We stayed there two nights in a nice hotel with a pool and aircon. The heat was terrible. The thing is about Paraguay is that its not really set up for travellers so there´s not much to do. But it is a good place to visit for a few days just to get off the beaten track and see typical South American life. We also had a TV in our room so we got to watch a bit of English TV and films (subtitled). Alan also manged to get a haircut from an old man with no teeth. He was very friendly and chatty but most of the time I couldn't understand a word he said. Only cost two quid though. Bargain. We only saw a couple of other travellers while we were there. They are easy to spot, like us I suppose. We ate in a naff chicken rotisserie place where that was literally all they served. Good though. Anyway, after two night we moved on again, 6 hours north to the Brazilian border town of Pedro Juan Caballero.

The town is actually half Brazilian and half Paraguayan, and it was hard to know where one country ended and the other began. It is basically a free border town. We´d heard that it could be a bit dodgy and that they run a lot of drugs though there. I was surprised by the amount of guards with big shotguns you saw out on the street. We only stayed one night here in transit to Brazil in a cheap but decent place. The next day we got up early for the massive immigration hassle. Most local people don't have to bother. Technically we could have just left but we needed to sort out exit/entry stamps or it would catch up with us later when we left Brazil. After ages wandering around asking directions we eventually got a taxi to the place which was about 2km out of town the to the Brazil police station. Then we made it just in time for the bus to Campo Grande, a few hours north in Brazil