Ciduad del Este

This place is in Paraguay, on the border with Brazil and Argentina. The whole city is a tax free zone, which is visited by every nationality in Latin America. City isn´t really the word to describe this place it is more a giant bazzar in the sun, a bizzarre, noisy and smelly one at that, with every nationality, language and shade of skin under the sun. The streets of this free market Nirvana consist of miles and miles of street traders selling everything from lighters, watches duvets, clothing, knocked off goods and counterfiet items through to coal sack sized bags of Cheezy Watsits (honest). In front of the stalls are roads chronically jammed with traffic, behind them seperated by public walkways are shopping malls of various sizes and types.

These walkways are feral: you can´t move without people accosting you either to provide you with a mugging experience, or to you to try and sell you whatever they can. On the sales front, one guy tried to sell me a pair of socks for two peso´s; I said no and walked on; two pairs of socks then, same price; no I said and walked some more. This went on until he was offering me 8 pairs of socks and I was halfway up the street.

On the mugging front? Well to avoid partaking of this experience I took in some of the malls. The contrast was incredible: the public walkways stunk of shit and piss, with flies congregating around piles of waste. On passing the large security type gentlemen, who held the doors open for me, I entered a world of luxury: marble floors, air conditioning, gold leaf, mahogony sales displays, comlimentary drinks and stunning female sales staff, wearing very short skirts. On sale was every type of expensive item and brand you can think of, and food from restaurants where Gordon Ramsey couldn´t get a job. Figuring it wouldn´t be long before my lack of purchases resulted in somebody making a decision to cast me back to Hades I took the oppotunity to use the bathroom. It´s not often going to the loo can be called an event but this one was a chamber, which would challenge Versaille, all marble and mirrors and manned by a uniformed attendant.

I repeated this exercise with two other malls with pretty much the same experience.Methinks, if the divide between the malls I visited , amazing where a white skin gets you in,  and the streets is the norm, then there may be trouble ahead down Paraguay way.