We woke to find that the rain was still falling with as much gusto as the previous night, and pretty much kept us confined to our room for most of the morning. Once the downpour abated we managed a walk down by the river, including a quick coffee in a bar overlooking Paraguay on the other side when a brief extra shower descended!! By the time we’d walked for a couple of hours we’d decided that there wasn’t really much to this place, and perhaps we should have just spent one night rather than two!! Salvation though came in the form of a great café bar where we had a couple of fantastic foccacia style grilled veg and cheese sandwiches with chips!! It reminded us strongly of the food we used to eat in the cafes around Withington and Chorlton at home!! After that we had exhausted all sightseeing possibilities and headed back to our hotel for some diary writing!! Later on we snacked on bread and cheese, washed down with another fine bottle of vino and amused ourselves with a Star Trek film on the

TV!

The next morning it was finally time to head to Paraguay - but now the rain was falling harder than ever. In fact it was some of the heaviest rain we have ever seen - up there with the tropical cyclone we got hit by in Goa!! We got a taxi to the international bridge, and going down the hill there was water running down the side of the road with such force that when it hit a parked car the force of it was actually sending a wave of water up onto the car’s rear windscreen!! We’d never seen anything like it and got drenched just running the 10 yards from the cab to the customs office!!! After a little confusion caused by us turning up in a cab we were stamped out of Argentina and headed across the bridge on a very old and crowded bus!! We had to get off the bus on the other side of the bridge and be stamped into Paraguay, and then get the next bus. We didn’t have anywhere booked in Encarnation, but there was a place recommended by Lonely