Posadas Argentina to Paraguay. To cross the border over a river with some illegal’s or not? That is the question.

We arrived in Posadas today, which is the border between Argentina and Paraguay.

We had the plan of looking for options for Chris, as he needed a visa to get into Paraguay. I already had mine, so we looked around for the consulate of Paraguay for him.

Apparently, for those fellow travelers, Posadas is the only place nearby where you can get Paraguay visas in person. There’s nowhere else along the Paraguay border to do so, not even in Foz de Iguaçu in Brazil.

So we spent the night in Posadas where we would get Chris’s visa in the morning which was processed in a few hours.

We met some nice German girls that were on their way to Paraguay as well the following morning.

Would be funny if we run into them, like I have been running into the same people this entire trip right. (For future notice- we did run into them, that’s why I mentioned them.)

So now on our way to Iguaçu tomorrow through Paraguay!

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As we entered Paraguay I was amazed. My entire perception of what I thought Paraguay was completely off.

It was very countryside-ish. It’s a poor country, but from the looks of the buildings and infrastructure it sure didn’t show it.

Money exchanged and good to go!

And it was pretty too

As we drove through, we saw the German girls that we met in Posadas Argentina the night before that were out looking at the Missions in Paraguay on the side of the road. So we waved at them and had a good laugh at our random meetings.

I basically enjoyed the rest of Paraguay just looking.

Except for the random wild fire we passed by

We were amazed to see all the hybrid crops and crazily perfect looking fields of green vegetation thanks to genetic engineering, all around. It seems the agricultural giants from around the world have come down here to sell their genetically engineered crops and fertilizer. Once you buy their hybrid crop, you have to buy their fertilizer as well for the crops to grow right. That’s the nice lucrative business it is.

I have also never seen so many guns strapped to the back of motorcycles before, it was fairly common to see, I never found out why. But I had the crazy idea that the passenger in the back could just grab it and fire away at the other motorcycle next to him if he really wanted to. Scary though indeed.

We eventually arrived in La Cuidad de Este at night.

We thought we could catch the last ferry to Argentina, so we drove through some sketchy neighborhoods to look for the port.

I asked the locals where it was and they pointed me in the right direction.

Just as we were near the port we had one more turn to go, I stopped to ask these two guys in a dark corner where the port was.

They came up all funky as if they were selling drugs or something. They said it was just around the corner and down.

They asked if I was crossing over, I said yeah. They said they could take us across. I said, umm alright, how much.

He proceeds to mention that it’s gotta be a little later. It was around 7pm by then.

Then more guys came up to the bike and started talking to Chris in Spanish. Granted Chris has Spanish skills but not enough to talk slang with these Paraguayans about some potentially crazy activity late at night.

So the guy’s starts asking me how much I’m willing to pay to get across. As it was a dark corner and the guys started getting more interested myself, Chris and the bike asking where we were from and how much the bike was worth etc , that little red light bulb inside my head lit up signifying, get the heck out of here!

Just for fun I continued the conversation egging the guys on the see what they had to offer. From what I got is that these guys cross late at night illegally with people and merchandise and were offering to take us across on one of their runs.

As soon as the guys started trying to shake our hands, touching the bike and huddling over the bike I sped off.

Last time somebody got close to my bike they tried to throw me off of it. I’m sure they could have done the same here but instead it could have been worse.

So after this scary encounter we found the port where eth military official tells us that this is a very dangerous area and not to talk to anyone as they will most likely try to do us harm…oooppps!

Sadly the last ship had left already and it was the weekend and would have to wait 3 days in this boring town for the next ferry. So we found a hostel for the night and looked at other options to cross the border.

What to do what to do….this might get interesting, keep tuned!