To get from Foz do Iguaçu to Asuncion is easy, when you know how... You have to first get a bus to the border, there you get off, get your stamp out of Brazil, either walk or take the bus over the bridge, get your stamp in to Paraguay and then catch a bus to the bus terminal... Easy, right? Well, I had the luck to meet a couple from Slovenia and they seemed to know exactly what they were doing so I decided to just follow them. We got to the bus terminal and people immediately starting to ask us where we were going. After some bargaining and changing money so we could pay for our ticket, we were finally on the bus to Asuncion. One thing that was knew to me in Paraguay was all the people getting on the bus to sell things. The bus stopped all the time, even though it was supposed to be a direct bus, and everywhere people tried to sell everything from empanadas to battery packs. When you get used to it, it's quite convenient.

Seven bumpy hours later, we arrived in Asuncion and I had to say goodbye to my new friends. I had a description on how to get to my hostel, so with my very limited Spanish, some bus numbers and the address of my hostel I tried to get on the right bus. I found it. Next challenge would be to get the driver to let me off at the right bus stop. Or, well there are no bus stops, so to let me off as close as possible to the hostel. It turned out to be a hard task and some other passengers joined in. A girl, about 17 years old, used google translate to tell me that she would get me to the hostel. She did and I was so thankful!

Urbanian hostel was a nice and clean hostel and I had some great sleeps there. In the days, I went to markets and walked in the city together with two guys from the hostel. I ate lunch at the same place every day, street food at the market, it was so good! And almost ridiculously cheap. Asuncion was a nice experience, it's different from every city I've ever been to. The city is not used to tourists, it's poor and dirty and a bit chaotic, but people are friendly and it has a nice feeling to it. I also felt very safe.

Jen arrived 2 days after me and we booked a bus to Santa Cruz. It was just going to be 24 hours of our lives. I mean, how bad can it be, right? Well, it can be very bad. If you have any other option, please take it! After about 26 hours on broken seats, without air con, toilet or any chance to sleep on a road that would be classified as a mountain road in Iceland or a road for tractors in Sweden, we finally made it to Santa Cruz.

We didn't like Santa Cruz at all, but we were just so happy to be in a nice hostel and to not be on that bus anymore. We had to rest for a few days before even thinking about the bus to Sucre.