Our hotel in Encarnación was quite nice, we had a nice big room and a comfy bed. Conveniently, there was a place across the road that made lomito sandwiches with an arabic twist, so kinda like a South American kebab, that made a good dinner.

First up in the morning we walked around the Costanera (waterfront) overlooking Posadas, Argentina on the other side of the river. It's done quite nicely with a river beach and places to eat, though most was shut as its winter, despite still being pretty hot.

We then caught a bus from the terminal about 30km out of Encarnación to a town called Trinidad, and the Santisíma Trinidad del Paraná Jesuit Ruins. It was a beautiful sunny day, so the ruins, amongst green grass and blue skies, looked very picturesque.

We wandered through the old church, houses, the square and other parts of the town that once had a population of approximately 2,500 people. Some archways over doors were still intact, and some of the more intricate stone and brickwork around columns and on sections of the church. There was also a museum section that had a collection of headstones etc. that had been excavated.

There were some other ruins nearby at a place called Jesus, however we had been told they weren't as impressive, and the tourist info said it would cost the equivalent of about $10 per person to reach them on a moto taxi, so we decided not to. Instead, we had some lunch and went for a wander to check out some gardens nearby that we saw a sign for.

The gardens were just a clearing really. On the return walk we heard a voice come from a house saying "Hello". The man asked if we were American, or German, or British? We responded that we were Australian and got chatting. He was a man in his 50's from France who had spent the last 3 years driving from the USA.

When he had arrived in Trinidad about 2 days prior, he was walking past that house and struck up conversation with the occupants. A woman, 'the most beautiful woman in the world' so we heard, and her mother and son. Frenchy had decided that he was going to spend the rest of his life in Trinidad and live happily ever after with this woman.

He had parked his car and camper trailer near the tourist office so he walked back there with us to have his afternoon siesta. He showed us his trailer, which worried us a little when he said that he wanted to show it to us, however we had a look and wondered how he lived in such a small trailer. Especially as most of it was filled up with a full sized piano! He then told us about how he really likes this woman, and he is trying really hard to get her to like him. He even had a shower yesterday!

Shortly after that comment we bid him farewell, and walked back to the main road for the bus back to town.

This was our last night in Paraguay, and we still had quite a few Gaurani left, so we decided instead of getting screwed on the exchange rate we should just splash out at a fancy Japanese restaurant. It was definitely worth it. It's been ages since we had a good Japanese feed and this food was delicious. Sushi, gyoza, beef tataki, soba and udon. Mmmmmmmm.

The next day we moved on to Posadas, just across the river in Argentina. The international bus stopped right near the hostel, and took us over the bridge. It was easy enough except for the hoardes of people who had obviously done their years worth of shopping on the cheaper Paraguayan side who were also catching the bus back.

As we had to get off at the Paraguayan border exit, we had to bash our way through everyone with our bags. There is no real immigration as such, just one man in a booth, which meant legging it across the traffic to reach him. Once stamped, which was a little difficult as the man was confused by the fact that we'd left Paraguay a few days earlier (it took Lindsay a few attempts to discuss with him and then show him that we'd left and entered on the same day), we were on the next bus passing through and on the bridge to Posadas and Argentina once again.

LAPFWT