Udon on the Parana

Back south again on a four hour bus to Posadas, which I knew wasn´t going to be four hours when I saw the ticket taker bring three DVDs onboard. At least the volume was low and the road smooth as the dense jungle of the far northeast gave way to a rolling landscape of hills and farms of Misiones Province.

I got in late to Posadas (thanks to The Devil Wears Prada) and stood for a few minutes trying to orient myself, being very touristy with my bag and my Lonely Planet under a streetlight as everyone else hopped on and off the local buses. A local couple, Tamara and Marco, put me out of my misery by pointing me in the right direction. They were both very nice and very Argentinian, and were really excited to show me around Posadas; in short, they were much more helpful in their hometown than I am in my own.

Besides eating an ice cream cone, some temperamental showers, and a street protest by mate farmers, not much happened in the couple days I was in Posadas. The city is well designed and very pedestrian friendly, with a lengthy costanera boardwalk down the bluffs by the Parana, and some new ritzy mansions to the northwest, but, as far as cities go, it´s all nothing much to speak of. So, I left, over the bridge to Paraguay.

Paraguay is, as you can imagine, a little off the beaten path for Americans and, pretty much, for everyone else. Someone at the consulate told me that the Republic gives out fewer than 2000 tourist visas to Americans each year (certainly not helped by Paraguay´s slogan: ¨Paraguay: You have to feel it.¨) It´s most famous author once called it ¨an island surrounded by land¨- all the Argentines said it was cheap, dirty, and poor.

Our bus broke down right after immigration on the far side of the bridge. Soldiers with rusting AK-47s directed people onto later buses. Hello, Paraguay!

By sheer luck I got off the bus right near my hostel, ¨The German Hostel¨run, naturally, by a thin Asian woman. Encarnacion, the only city of any size in southern Paraguay, did a thriving business in selling Argentines tax-free goods until Argentina one-upped them by imploding its own economy in 2001.



Encarnacion is divided in half by a steep bluff, cutting the hectic shabby commercial district off from the sculpted plazas up the hill. For a border town, it is quite pleasant. The highlight of the city - at least in my opinion - is Hiroshima, a Japanese cultural center\restaurant with the best udon I´ve ever had. I suppose it feels a bit strange to be an American sitting in Paraguay eating Japanese food, but such is the world we live in. The next day, July 4th, I headed north.