When we finally decided to head to Bonito and looked around for accommodation it looked bleak. The Easter weekend being the biggest holiday in latin america, every place was booked fully. So we decided to head there for three nights and forced to leave on Good Friday.
From Concepcion we left early in the morning by bus to the border, consisting of Pedro Yuan on the Paraguayan side & Ponta Pora in Brazil. The border runs through the middle of the town, with one side of the street being Paraguay and the other Brazil. Sadly you have to take a (overpriced) cab to get through immigration, as the bus terminal & immigration offices in Paraguay and the federal police (where you get the stamp) & bus terminal in Brazil are all spread out through town.
Once at the Brazilian terminal we where in for a surprise, next bus to Bonito would run the next day at 06:30... Besides being stuck in a ugly and dangerous (so we where told) place, we would also miss out on a day in Bonito, for which we already paid big pre-easter-holiday-rip-off price. And besides would reduce our time there to two meagre days. Sadly everybody we approached at the terminal wouldn't speak english or spanish (for a town which is split in half with an spanish speaking country quite a feat...) and where unhelpful to rude to our situation.
So we ended up calling our hostel in Bonito about our options. They sent us a private driver, 4 hours/275km one way, to pick us up, not cheap =/.
When we arrived in the night we went straight to bed, but the surprises weren't over. More to this later!
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| Arriving late at night in Bonito |