PARAGUAY: Apocalyptic City

I was in the Cuidad del Este for only about six hours, but it felt a whole lot longer.

The Iguazu Falls lie on a triple border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Paraguay is easily the poorest nation, and the border town, in English City of the East, sells outrageously cheap electronic goods to its richer neighbours. This makes it a popular day trip from Brazil or Argentina, and Corinne needed a camera, so we jumped the border and took our chances.

The electronics shops can be found in one small area around the main dual carriageway. Once amongst the many stalls and malls, we were surrounded by folk wanting to sell us stuff - clippers, socks, flannels, chocolate. And they were tremendously persistent, to the point where we had to be bloody rude to get them to leave us alone.

But they were nothing next to the camera-floggers. Men and boys stood around, waiting for gringos, and when spotted, we were asked what we wanted, cameradvdvideomusiccameracamera? Camera, we said. And from there they'd take us into one of the many shops, and condescend with the shop staff, and fawn and bleat, until we decided to move on, and they followed us to the next place. One kid, in particular, was unbelievable, and his dad wasn't so much better.

Anyway, perhaps surprised by Corinne's Spanish, they talked and talked and bigged themselves up, to the point where she had a pad full of numbers and a spinning head. We both had spinning heads. The shop staff looked at me a little curiously, for here I was with a woman who was doing all the talking, and, to them, obviously wore the trousers. They smiled at me, perhaps in sympathy.

So, eventually, she'd picked a model, and, aware that much of the gear in the Cuidad is fake, or reconditioned - in some cases the boxes are clearly battered and have flourescent repair stickers on them, despite being offered as new, at new prices - went to the only bloke who'd told us about the fake, reconditioned stuff, and bought her camera, and took as many pictures as she could - mainly of herself looking gorgeous - before the undercharged battery ran out.

She was well happy with her camera, though, even though the bloke's credit card machine didn't work and he took us on a walk through a crowded market, stinking with the risk of robbery, to take us to his 'brother's' store, and even there it took ages to get the deal done, all exchange rates and phone calls and much suspicion on our part. And then we hopped the bus, in the sun, many dodgy Asian characters walking around, and made it back to Argentina for a cocktail.