After our experience in the capital our next port of call had a lot of work to do to try and win back my confidence in Paraguay. Cuidad del Est sits on the border with Brazil which when crossed is only 18km from the border with Argentina and the town of Puerto Iguazu, home of the famous Iguazu Falls. We decided to break our trip to the falls with a stay in Cuidad del Est. Some 20km out of the centre of the town is the Itiapu Hydroelectric Dam. The sad civil engineer side of me was interested in seeing this structure as this is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world taking over 26 million cubic meters of concrete to construct it. The highlight of the tour was to be a trip into the bowels of the dam to the 1km long machine room housing the giant turbines that turn the millions of litres of water into electricity.

After sitting through a half hour video about the dam (which showed 5 minutes of interesting material and 25 of info from their sponsors) we were herded onto an awaiting bus and driven to the viewpoint. Five minutes for pictures then back on board to be driven around the rest of the site. We were then deposited back at the visitors centre with no tour of the generator room. Slnce the tour was free we couldn't even ask for our money back.

Oh well perhaps Paraguay could redeem itself during our visit to the nearby museum of flora and fauna which is one of the six sites set up to home to some of the animals and plants that had their natural habitat flooded during the construction of the dam. We were quite excited as this was home to a South American puma which so far during our time in the continent had remained illusive. It still is illusive as the place was shut.

There was one more thing left to do in Cuidad del Est and that was to visit the "Supermaket of South America". As the town is on the border with Brazil and not far from Argentina the road to the border is packed with small shops offering discount and duty free items, most of these being electronic items. Some of these are the real thing, some are good copies, some are obvious fakes and the rest are stolen.The amount of shops is astonishing. One building was over 10 storeys of electronic shops selling everything from mobile phone covers to the latest huge LCD TV's all at a fraction of the prce you would pay in the UK. We didn't come away empty handed as we bought a tiny palm computer (for less than quarter the price you would pay at home) so we can write these blog entries anytime and anywhere we like (this one is being written on a bus to Buenos Aries). Cuidad del Est did not turn out to be a complete washout but it came vey close to it. Our experience of 4 days probably didn't do Paraguay justice as we were only ever cutting through but as we waited in the pouring rain at the border the next day we couldn't have wanted that exit stamp any more. Ps... Dont buy Paraguayan chocolate peanuts as they contain neither chocolate or peanuts.