Our two weeks in Paraguay are over and we are a little sad to be leaving. While we’re not sure we’d use valuable vacation time to make a special trip to Paraguay, we are really glad we came here and would wholeheartedly recommend it to other travelers.
Our next destination is Salta. There are no direct buses to Salta from Asunción, so we have to change buses in Resistencia. On the map, Resistencia looks very far out of the way since Salta is a little north of Asunción. In fact, it looks so far out of the way we explored other options including crossing to Clorinda, just across the river from Asunción and catching a bus there. There is a city bus to Clorinda, but it can take two hours to cross as it winds through all the city streets first. There is also a ferry from Puerto Itá Enramada in Asunción, to Puerto Pilcomayo just outside Clorinda. Allegedly there’s a shuttle into town, but if you missed it, you’d be 10km from anywhere. The final argument is there’s only one bus from Clorinda to Salta (leaving at 1:50pm), but it goes through Resistencia anyway, so it’s a lot easier to just get a bus from the bus terminal in Asunción to begin with.
The bus company El Pulqui does the run to Resistencia for 120,000 guaranís ($20) per ticket, and you can connect to Salta from there. The guy who sold us our tickets told us there was only one bus from Resistencia to Salta that we could connect to and recommended we buy our tickets all the way through. We suspect this information might not be totally accurate, but the connection time is 50 minutes, so we didn’t want to risk missing it if he was right. Besides, the price he quoted seemed about what we would have expected – 400,000 guaranís ($66.67) per ticket all the way from Asunción to Salta.
As we were getting ready to pay, he noticed Eric’s sunglasses and asked how much Eric would be willing to sell them for. He was willing to give us a discount on the ticket price if Eric would give him his sunglasses. Since we bought the sunglasses in Ciudad del Este for $1.67, there was a lot of bargaining room. Eric suggested $16.67, but they settled on $8.33. The guy needed sunglasses for later in the day but didn’t have time to buy them. Eric, who is a consummate destroyer of sunglasses and was already on his second pair of the trip was pleased to have an excuse to get a new pair since he’d thought the frames on these were starting to get bent.
There were two French girls in line behind us buying tickets for the same bus to Salta, so the guy told us to stick together. The next day, we ran into the French girls again on the local bus to the bus terminal.
The bus to Resistencia left at 10:30am, so we spent our last guaranís at the bus terminal. Then we got in line to load our stuff in the belly of the bus and realized money was being collected. We’re not really sure why you have to pay to put your stuff under the bus when you’ve already paid for a ticket, but this seems pretty common in Paraguay. We paid 30 Argentinian pesos ($0.81) for two bags and got on the bus. This bus was air conditioned and pretty nice compared to other buses we’ve experienced in Paraguay; however, once again, Eric’s seat had a problem. It wouldn’t stay anywhere between fully upright and fully reclined, so he spent six hours practically laying in the lap of the guy behind us.
After about an hour and a half, we arrived at the Paraguay-Argentina border. So far all of our border crossings have been uneventful, but there’s always a first time for everything. Everyone got off the bus to go through Paraguayan exit and Argentinian entrance procedures. While we were waiting in line, all the luggage was being unloaded from the bus. For some reason, we never saw Jess’s bag be unloaded, and the maleteros (baggage handlers) were putting some bags (mostly those that look like backpacker bags) in a separate pile. Jess went in search of her bag and discovered it was nowhere to be seen. We know it went on the bus, so it had to be somewhere, but the situation was quite weird. The maleteros went and found it near the bus, but it was on the other side of customs, so they couldn’t bring it to us and we couldn’t go to it. They explained they made a mistake but it would be fine, and then they wanted a tip. We definitely didn’t understand what they wanted a tip for.
While we were trying to keep an eye on Jess’s bag, one of the maleteros kept asking Eric if he had a camera in his bag and kept saying “camera prohibido” which made no sense to us since cameras are definitely not prohibited at the border. Eric’s big bag didn’t have a camera in it, luckily, so we told him there was no camera and he grabbed the bag and ran with it to the X-ray and before we knew it, it was on the other side of the border lying in the dirt near the bus. It seems the normal procedure is for each passenger to bring their own baggage to the x-ray, and we would have happily brought our own bags there, so this didn’t feel particularly helpful. Paraguay has no import taxes on electronics, so lots of foreigners buy cheap electronics and bring them across the border. It seems there is a limit to how much foreigners can buy before they have to pay a hefty tax, and maybe that’s why he kept asking about a camera. Or maybe he was asking about stolen or counterfeit goods which also abound in Paraguay.
The same guy was behaving similarly oddly with the French girls, asking them about drugs in their bags and suggesting the cigarettes they had were illegal. We think maybe he was suggesting he could get illegal things over the border for a tip, but nothing any of us had was actually illegal, and we were pretty sure we wouldn’t trust this guy if it were.
Once we got across to our bags and the bus, the guys were again asking for a tip, this time for loading the bags back in the bus. We hadn’t seen anyone else pay anything and we were still feeling uncomfortable enough about the interaction that we put our own bags in the bus and got on without paying a tip. We were a bit worried they would just unload our bags and leave them at the border because we didn’t tip them. Eric asked the bus driver if it’s normal to pay them and he said yes, something for loading and unloading the bags, and that our bags would probably be ok without it since there are cameras all over the border. Interesting. We did subsequently see some people paying a small amount of money, so it seems this was normal after all, but it was our first encounter with this tipping thing.
About an hour and a half after the border crossing, the bus was stopped by the gendarmería nacional, police who got on the bus and went row by row searching bags and looking at documents. We think they were looking for drugs, and after a while they let us continue. About two hours later, we were stopped again at another checkpoint, and this time the gendarmería got on with a drug sniffing dog. The dog made two passes through the bus and we continued on our way. Little did we know this leg of the journey would be the least exciting.
We arrived in Resistencia at 5:18pm (almost an hour early) and got on the next bus to Salta at 7:00pm. Everything went smoothly with a few stops along the way to pick up additional passengers until:
9:45pm: Presidencia Roque Sáenz Peña – Policía Federal Argentina get on and search bus. They stop after searching a few rows in the back.
10:32pm: It suddenly smells like burning rubber. Bus has a flat tire? Bus stops.
10:36pm: German woman in row behind us starts watching German comedy show on high volume
10:42pm: Bus driver is investigating the tire situation, possibly with jacks.
10:52pm: We are driving the bus after all and tire doesn’t seem to be fixed, so bus is moving slowly and making a ticking noise as we bump along. We think maybe we are going to the next town: Pampa del Infierno (Pampas of Hell) which seems sort of fitting for the night we’re about to have.
11:03pm: Bus stops again. Bus drivers get out. Look under bus, but nothing new happens, so:
11:08pm: We are driving again
11:21pm: We stop outside closed gas station. The bus driver is on the phone, calling bus company for help? He walks over to the gas station which is closed. Then he walks down the street.
11:30pm: Driver must not have found anything because he’s back and trying the gas station again.
11:43pm: Passengers are getting out for a smoke break. The French girls who are sitting one row ahead of us go outside and later report the wheel of the bus no longer has a tire at all. We must have lost it along the way. Eric and I go to sleep.
12:06am: Still on side of road. Most passengers are outside.
2:45: A new bus arrives and all the bags are transferred
2:55am: All the passengers move to another bus
3:05am: We are on our way again!
7:00am: This is our originally scheduled arrival time in Salta; we are nowhere close.
8:44am: Stop at gas station to refuel bus.
9:33am: Now why are we stopped? Unfortunately there was a fatal accident between a motorcycle and a car up ahead and the road has been closed. There’s no other way through, so we have to wait for the accident to be investigated and cleared.
10:33am: Back in the bus, we’re moving.
11:48am: We see a sign saying Salta is to the right, but we just turned left???
12:05pm: We arrive at bus terminal San José de Metán, unload some passengers and then head back in the correct direction towards Salta
1:22pm: We arrive at General Güémez bus station
2:30pm: We finally arrive at Salta bus terminal seven and a half hours late after 28 hours of travel. It feels good to leave this bus journey behind us.
Wow … what an experience.