Three Countries. Two Hours. One Mission.
Our latest destination in Argentina was Puerto Iguazu. We chose to spend some additional time here to visit the waterfalls and have some relaxing down time too.
We couldn’t have chosen a better spot for it – the hostel was just lovely with a relaxing vibe to it, nice people staying there and really helpful staff. The sun was also shining too! Two nights out of our five night stay, we were upgraded to a private double ensuite, which after only three weeks of travelling felt like absolute luxury – as if someone had given us the keys to the honeymoon suite!
We also couldn’t have timed this stay better either. This place felt like a retreat, which we desperately needed. Without dwelling on the negative for long; we had our bag stolen two days before, when we stopped off in Buenos Aires after Patagonia. Our hostel was not great to say the least, so we chose to carry a lot of our valuables on us which meant the lucky thieves hit the jackpot with our camera, drone and money, amongst a lot of other things, but luckily not our passports. Needless to say, we couldn’t wait to move on and try to move forward from the ordeal.
On arriving in Iguazu, we spent the first two days at the waterfalls. We took our time following the different trails to encounter this absolutely incredible force of nature. Words cannot describe the sights we saw – every new angle we explored them from blew us away more than the last.
On our second day there, we spent more time on the nature trails and what beauty we discovered – the somewhat tropical environment housed groups of butterflies, iguanas and families of monkeys.
During our stay, we heard about a place called Cuidad del Este in Paraguay. We had come to learn that this area was renowned for shopping, where you could buy literally anything you wanted. We spent our third day researching this area and seeking advice from the hostel, after which we decided to make the trip on our last day to purchase the things we had lost.
Armed with a long list of screen shots of the camera, lense, and everything else we needed, we duly got a taxi that the hostel arranged for us to make the journey to Paraguay. That morning we woke up to torrential rain and we hoped that this wasn’t a sign of bad things to come!
To get there, you have to go through Brazil so we stamped ourselves out of Argentina at border control and made the journey across a section of Brazil. A bridge (called ‘the friendship bridge’) joins Brazil and Paraguay and on our approach to it, the traffic ground to a halt. We were basically on the M25 equivalent – just a huge car park going no where. So our taxi driver casually suggests in a mixture of broken English and hand gestures that he parks up close to the bridge in a side street and we walk across to Paraguay. The alternative was up to three hours to drive over the bridge and the same back. This was becoming Mission Impossible!
After muffled discussions between us in the back of the taxi, we decided to go for it and negotiated a two hour waiting time with the driver for us to complete our shopping trip. Mission accepted. Timer set, zipped up in our macs, we joined groups of people in ponchos and flip flops running across the bridge, out of Brazil and into Paraguay. It was surreal!
We had three shops on our hit list and not a clue what to expect….. Imagine entering Argos at Christmas time and being asked to play supermarket sweep – that’s effectively what the next two hours involved!
Our preparation paid dividends as we dashed around each of the stores getting what we needed. You start by ordering your items in one section, then go to another section to pay for them, then another to get them and then another for testing the product. Each with their own long queue added to the intensity as we watched out two hour timer count down.
Anxiously waiting for the last of our items in the last store, it was T minus 15 minutes before our two hours were up and we still had to do the 15 minute dash back over the bridge to the finish line. A very quick test of our products, we filled Laura’s backpack with all our goods, she strapped it on tight and we joined the poncho-clad crowds to run back across the border! Nav ran behind as ‘lookout’ whilst Laura was effectively like a waddling donkey carrying them!
Hot yet soaking wet, but happy with our purchases, we made it back to the taxi with no time to spare! Relieved to see our taxi driver still there, we got into the taxi, breathed a sigh of relief and sat back as we ventured back across to Argentina! Mission accomplished!
