Ciudad del Este, Paraguay - Sciatica. Look It Up If You Don't Believe Me

We accidentally checked out of our hotel an hour late, but it was not a problem. What was a problem was that we had run out of money yet again, after having just taken money out of the ATM two days ago. Well, I had taken out money. Michael couldn't. And after several days of fruitless communication with his bank, he has finally found out what the problem is with his card - his bank has up and switched their debit cards from Visa to MasterCard, rendering previously held cards completely unusable.

They've sent out new MasterCard ATM cards, but of course Michael's is sitting in a pile of our mail in New York City. Which makes it even more infuriating that his e-responses from the bank have all been form letters along the lines of "First check the ATM to make sure it accepts cards with the Plus (Visa) symbol..."

So we don't know what we're going to do about that. But in the meantime, I just got some more money out of my account. Michael and I have become a lot more fluid about money as the trip has progressed. Even in the beginning we never divided things down to the penny, but we we paid a bit more attention to "you paid for lunch yesterday, so let me pay today" type negotiations.

We're still on a fairly consistent plan of taking turns paying for hotel rooms (unless we end up someplace ultra-pricy, in which case we split it) but everything else is much looser. It's more like whoever reaches his or her stash of money first pays for the bus tickets or whatever and we just kind of feel like it's going to work out in the end.

So anyway, we went back and paid for our room and collected our bags. Bags in tow, we stopped at a modest Japanese-Paraguayan lunch place across from the bus station. I had the tempura, which was very heavy and eggy, and Michael had the udon, which was good despite the fact that the noodles were not udon, but fettucine.

Crossing the street into the bus station, we were nearly run over by a bus leaving for Ciudad del Este right that second. The ayudante promised we could sit together, so we quickly stowed our bags and hopped on. Nice timing. We sat down in the very last row and paid our 38 mil guaranies each. We were on the sun side of the bus which was not so great, but the beauty of Latin-American busses is the window curtain. So our view became thick,dusty green cloth, but at least we didn't fry to death.

I tied my scarf over my hair to protect my new twists from being ruined rubbing against the seat back. This cut down on the staring some, but not much. It was not too bad of a six-hour ride, not as bad as the ride into Encarnación, but not the snap that six hours used to be. The problem - and this is the most hilarious thing Michael's ever heard - is that I think I might be suffering from sciatica.

I can't mention it without Michael breaking into his old-folks voice, "Oh, my sciatica is acting up..." but when I looked it up online (LOVE the Internet) the symptoms sound exactly like what I have: "moderate to severe pain, which begins in the buttocks and runs down through the leg or foot." And let us not forget that we have been riding busses for almost FOUR HUNDRED HOURS in the past year, including a twenty-two hour ride down a dirt road just a few days ago. And sciatica is most common in people from ages thirty to fifty. I am thirty and a half. So there.

At any rate, it has become uncomfortable for me to sit on the bus with these bizarre pains that sort of dully travel down my right leg and flare up in my toes. I'm constantly squirming around and stretching out my leg to try to alleviate it, but nothing really works except standing up or lying down.

We arrived in Ciudad del Este at 6:30, after dark. We'd heard bad things about the town, and we were tired, so we just got a cab to our chosen hotel, the Hotel Munich. (Pronounced Moon-ih-shee by the cab driver.) Man, if I was impressed with the Frigobar at the last place? This new Frigobar was truly deluxe. Several kinds of bottled beer, soda, agua con and sin gas, cookies, crackers - it was great. There was no regular bidet, but there was a hand-held one.

Walking through the dark streets in search of dinner, we didn't think the city was nearly as bad as we'd been warned it was. Sure, it seemed grimy and we tried to keep our wits about us, but we had no threatening or unpleasant moments as we walked (and walked). Everything was closed for election day.

We passed one restaurant, a diner-looking place attached to a large hotel, where the few people inside, patrons and staff, stared at me so hard and bug-eyed that I had acknowledge it. Luckily I waved in a friendly way instead of doing something rude, because that turned out to be the only open restaurant around and we ended up going back.

Walking home was as uneventful as walking out, and we stopped at a small snack place for some arroz con leche in little plastic containers. Leftovers, of course, went into the Frigobar.

HOURS ON THE BUS: 385.75 

--Note: The photos are a sneak peek forward in time. They were actually taken the next day, but since I didn't have any pics of Ciudad del Este, I thought I'd throw them in here for your amusement.