Do you want to successfully cross the border between Argentina and Paraguay?
There are several ways to cross the border between Argentina and Paraguay but I did the crossing from Puerto Iguazu, ARGENTINA to Ciudad del Este, PARAGUAY. I was there in December 2010. In hindsight, the border crossing was easy compared to others I've been to, but you still need to get things right, if you read on I'll explain exactly how I did it. This was one of the most unusual border crossings I have ever done, for one reason and that is that in about 45 minutes I was in three countries! Really are you confused? Yes it did confuse me a bit as well...read on for my first border crossing report in this series from my travels...
Firstly - you get a bus at Puerto Iguazu bus station with PARAGUAY written as the destination on it. These buses are yellow in colour and single decker with the words El Practico written on them. They leave quite regularly throughout the day. I crossed on a Sunday morning, around 10 am. I don't think that you can buy tickets in advance, so just check out of your hostel or hotel in the small town of Puerto Iguazu and go to the bus station (there is just one main bus station in Puerto Iguazu). I would recommend doing this early in the morning - I have no idea if the border is open at night - nor if it would be worth risking it.
I was on my own and I was basically wanting to get across into Paraguay and then onwards to Asuncion.
Ciudad del Este, the current name for this Paraguayan city, which is The City of The East, is on the other side of the river to Argentina. The river is the border, and the bridge is the most common crossing. As this is a post about the border crossing, I won't talk about other stuff but I had already been to the triple border of Tres Fronteras (the point where you can see all three countries). It gets confusing when you realise that your bus to Paraguay goes VIA BRAZIL.
So I pay 5 Argentine Pesos for my bus and ask the driver to confirm if he will stop at the border for me to get my passport stamped. I was the only one on the bus that didn't come from either Brazil, Argentina or Paraguay. Those countries have some sort of agreement with one another that prevents them needing visas or passport stamps to border cross into the other.
I actually reckoned a lot of "backpackers" (I dislike that term, but I actually am one...) would be going from Iguazu through into Paraguay next to see the popular Ituapu Dam and the Jesuit Ruins in Trinidad. But after talking to around 30 people at the hostel (the marvellous Hostel Inn Iguazu Falls) I realised not one of them was going to Paraguay, nor did they want to go. A few of my fellow travellers even said to me "why would you want to go to Paraguay?"! With that kind of statement it that makes me realise that some of us are avid travellers and some are just not up for the travel melarkey. An avid traveller will literally go anywhere, anytime. Someone who is not in the avid traveller mode, will be much more choosy about where they go. I'll go anywhere. Whether these guys in the hostel wanted to head to Paraguay or not was up to them, but I was now alone and there were no other "backpackers" on my bus or in the station that morning at all.
Of course to travel in South America you should have some grasp of Spanish at least (I studied in Montevideo but my Spanish is shocking) so you can chat to locals and bus drivers. Once I saw the "queue for Paraguay" developing, I joined it, bag laden to the core and sweaty. Importantly I had my passport in hand and all my money changed into Paraguayan Guarani. This is important - change ALL your Argentine Pesos (except for the price of the bus) into Paraguayan Guarani in Puerto Iguazu. You can even do this on a Sunday morning - I found a bank/exchange place in town at 9am to get mine changed.
After boarding the bus you will be driven out of the town of Puerto Iguazu to the border bridge with BRAZIL. Yes, don't be alarmed at this point, you are still on the bus to PARAGUAY! At the Argentine exit customs you MUST make sure you ask the driver to let you off to get your passport stamped. Most on the bus may not need it - they're mostly locals.
Get off the bus, grab your bags and get your passport stamped and straight back on the bus. Then the bus will cross the Iguazu River into Brazil. But the bus will not stop at the Brazilian border control. The driver of the bus does this route all the time and the sign on the front of the bus tells you that you are heading to "Paraguay Directo" (directly to Paraguay). You have arrived officially in Brazil, but with no proof of it as you are in transit on a bus!
We drive through the city of Foz Do Iguacu, you can read many more of my reports on the actual waterfalls and my first trip across into Brazil. By the way, it's safe to assume that by taking this route you'll most likely have just seen the amazing Iguazu Falls!
After twenty minutes roughly in Brazil on the bus you will arrive at an odd bridge. You can see a border checkpoint here, but bypass it. This place is the Brazilian border checkpoint. You will remember being in Brazil for twenty minutes, but your passport will not have any proof of it. You do not need to get your passport stamped at these two Brazilian passport checkpoints, BUT once your bus arrives onto the bridge to Paraguay, keep checking for the Paraguayan entrance border checkpoint. Basically the driver won't stop so charge to the front of the bus and yell to be let out!
Unfortunately when you tell the driver to stop and you get out, he won't wait for you as the passengers onboard Don't want to hang around waiting for a gringo to get their passport stamped. You get out and are immediately in the madness of Ciudad del Este, while your bus continues on its route.
I should also mention that you are urged not to cross this border by foot, mainly because of of the risk of robberies and personal safety issues. The bus is only 5 Pesos you might as well get the bus! I ran to the front of the bus and shouted for the driver to stop, this was about 300 metres ahead of the checkpoint. I just expected him to stop soon but of course he didn't so I got out on my own. I actually asked him if he could wait for me but I soon realised he wouldn't, so I had to grab both my bags. This was my amazing arrival into Paraguay!
Next I needed to fin the immigration place to stamp my passport now - it was hidden away in a very odd place in the middle of what seemed to be a concrete building site on the Paraguayan side of the bridge to Brazil. I didn't actually take a video of this part of my trip and wish I had - it was just crazy! When I finally found the passport place I was the only person in there. Hot, sweaty and with two heavy bags! Without further ado they gave me my entry stamp so I was now a legal tourist in Paraguay! In the previous hour I had actually been in three countries, though officially and according to my passport I was only in Argentina and Paraguay.
I can't promise you that this is the simplest way across the border into Paraguay from Brazil (or Argentina) but I loved it partly because I was the only real traveller about. I could tell instantly that Ciudad del Este was a crazy city. Lots of locals asked me if I wanted to buy stuff. You can stay a night or two in this border city known as Ciudad del Este if you want but I had no time to linger as I wanted to get to Asuncion fairly quickly.
I got a taxi from opposite the Immigration Office - the driver may even have ripped me off but he took me to the bus station in Ciudad del Este for a fee of a few US Dollars (thousands of Guarani by the way). This huy was just hanging around beside his car for a tourist like me. Agree a price first. You can normally trust these guys.
This is part of my ongoing series on border crossings to hopefully help my fellow travellers out there. Get in touch and share your stories especially if you have done similar border crossings!
Safe travels!
There are several ways to cross the border between Argentina and Paraguay but I did the crossing from Puerto Iguazu, ARGENTINA to Ciudad del Este, PARAGUAY. I was there in December 2010. In hindsight, the border crossing was easy compared to others I've been to, but you still need to get things right, if you read on I'll explain exactly how I did it. This was one of the most unusual border crossings I have ever done, for one reason and that is that in about 45 minutes I was in three countries! Really are you confused? Yes it did confuse me a bit as well...read on for my first border crossing report in this series from my travels...
Firstly - you get a bus at Puerto Iguazu bus station with PARAGUAY written as the destination on it. These buses are yellow in colour and single decker with the words El Practico written on them. They leave quite regularly throughout the day. I crossed on a Sunday morning, around 10 am. I don't think that you can buy tickets in advance, so just check out of your hostel or hotel in the small town of Puerto Iguazu and go to the bus station (there is just one main bus station in Puerto Iguazu). I would recommend doing this early in the morning - I have no idea if the border is open at night - nor if it would be worth risking it.
I was on my own and I was basically wanting to get across into Paraguay and then onwards to Asuncion.
Ciudad del Este, the current name for this Paraguayan city, which is The City of The East, is on the other side of the river to Argentina. The river is the border, and the bridge is the most common crossing. As this is a post about the border crossing, I won't talk about other stuff but I had already been to the triple border of Tres Fronteras (the point where you can see all three countries). It gets confusing when you realise that your bus to Paraguay goes VIA BRAZIL.
So I pay 5 Argentine Pesos for my bus and ask the driver to confirm if he will stop at the border for me to get my passport stamped. I was the only one on the bus that didn't come from either Brazil, Argentina or Paraguay. Those countries have some sort of agreement with one another that prevents them needing visas or passport stamps to border cross into the other.
I actually reckoned a lot of "backpackers" (I dislike that term, but I actually am one...) would be going from Iguazu through into Paraguay next to see the popular Ituapu Dam and the Jesuit Ruins in Trinidad. But after talking to around 30 people at the hostel (the marvellous Hostel Inn Iguazu Falls) I realised not one of them was going to Paraguay, nor did they want to go. A few of my fellow travellers even said to me "why would you want to go to Paraguay?"! With that kind of statement it that makes me realise that some of us are avid travellers and some are just not up for the travel melarkey. An avid traveller will literally go anywhere, anytime. Someone who is not in the avid traveller mode, will be much more choosy about where they go. I'll go anywhere. Whether these guys in the hostel wanted to head to Paraguay or not was up to them, but I was now alone and there were no other "backpackers" on my bus or in the station that morning at all.
Of course to travel in South America you should have some grasp of Spanish at least (I studied in Montevideo but my Spanish is shocking) so you can chat to locals and bus drivers. Once I saw the "queue for Paraguay" developing, I joined it, bag laden to the core and sweaty. Importantly I had my passport in hand and all my money changed into Paraguayan Guarani. This is important - change ALL your Argentine Pesos (except for the price of the bus) into Paraguayan Guarani in Puerto Iguazu. You can even do this on a Sunday morning - I found a bank/exchange place in town at 9am to get mine changed.
After boarding the bus you will be driven out of the town of Puerto Iguazu to the border bridge with BRAZIL. Yes, don't be alarmed at this point, you are still on the bus to PARAGUAY! At the Argentine exit customs you MUST make sure you ask the driver to let you off to get your passport stamped. Most on the bus may not need it - they're mostly locals.
Get off the bus, grab your bags and get your passport stamped and straight back on the bus. Then the bus will cross the Iguazu River into Brazil. But the bus will not stop at the Brazilian border control. The driver of the bus does this route all the time and the sign on the front of the bus tells you that you are heading to "Paraguay Directo" (directly to Paraguay). You have arrived officially in Brazil, but with no proof of it as you are in transit on a bus!
We drive through the city of Foz Do Iguacu, you can read many more of my reports on the actual waterfalls and my first trip across into Brazil. By the way, it's safe to assume that by taking this route you'll most likely have just seen the amazing Iguazu Falls!
After twenty minutes roughly in Brazil on the bus you will arrive at an odd bridge. You can see a border checkpoint here, but bypass it. This place is the Brazilian border checkpoint. You will remember being in Brazil for twenty minutes, but your passport will not have any proof of it. You do not need to get your passport stamped at these two Brazilian passport checkpoints, BUT once your bus arrives onto the bridge to Paraguay, keep checking for the Paraguayan entrance border checkpoint. Basically the driver won't stop so charge to the front of the bus and yell to be let out!
Unfortunately when you tell the driver to stop and you get out, he won't wait for you as the passengers onboard Don't want to hang around waiting for a gringo to get their passport stamped. You get out and are immediately in the madness of Ciudad del Este, while your bus continues on its route.
I should also mention that you are urged not to cross this border by foot, mainly because of of the risk of robberies and personal safety issues. The bus is only 5 Pesos you might as well get the bus! I ran to the front of the bus and shouted for the driver to stop, this was about 300 metres ahead of the checkpoint. I just expected him to stop soon but of course he didn't so I got out on my own. I actually asked him if he could wait for me but I soon realised he wouldn't, so I had to grab both my bags. This was my amazing arrival into Paraguay!
Next I needed to fin the immigration place to stamp my passport now - it was hidden away in a very odd place in the middle of what seemed to be a concrete building site on the Paraguayan side of the bridge to Brazil. I didn't actually take a video of this part of my trip and wish I had - it was just crazy! When I finally found the passport place I was the only person in there. Hot, sweaty and with two heavy bags! Without further ado they gave me my entry stamp so I was now a legal tourist in Paraguay! In the previous hour I had actually been in three countries, though officially and according to my passport I was only in Argentina and Paraguay.
I can't promise you that this is the simplest way across the border into Paraguay from Brazil (or Argentina) but I loved it partly because I was the only real traveller about. I could tell instantly that Ciudad del Este was a crazy city. Lots of locals asked me if I wanted to buy stuff. You can stay a night or two in this border city known as Ciudad del Este if you want but I had no time to linger as I wanted to get to Asuncion fairly quickly.
I got a taxi from opposite the Immigration Office - the driver may even have ripped me off but he took me to the bus station in Ciudad del Este for a fee of a few US Dollars (thousands of Guarani by the way). This huy was just hanging around beside his car for a tourist like me. Agree a price first. You can normally trust these guys.
This is part of my ongoing series on border crossings to hopefully help my fellow travellers out there. Get in touch and share your stories especially if you have done similar border crossings!
Safe travels!
About the Author:
If you want more amazing tips on crossing world borders and popular travel tips and stories, check out Jonny Blair's awesome travel and lifestyle website Dont Stop Living Happy travels and don't stop living!
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