Ciudad del Este

I crossed the Friendship Bridge from Foz do Iguaçu on foot, which takes longer than expected because the sidewalk is shared with a procession of sacoleiros — the Brazilians who cross regularly to buy goods cheaply in Paraguay and carry them back in overstuffed bags. The bridge over the Paraná is not pedestrian-friendly by design, and the traffic is heavy in the particular way of border crossings: trucks, taxis, motorcycles loaded with boxes, a bus with its cargo hold jammed with wrapped electronics. Arriving in Ciudad del Este felt like stepping down a gear from Brazil’s already considerable urban intensity.

Ciudad del Este is the second largest city in Paraguay and its commercial capital in everything except official designation. The central market district is one of those places that functions on a logic that feels alien to anyone who shops in the orderly European or North American sense: blocks of covered galleries where perfume stalls butt up against electronics vendors who compete with luggage shops, everything in stacks and piles and shouted prices, the smell of fried food and synthetic fabrics and something I couldn’t identify that might have been the particular scent of mass commerce. I bought a pair of headphones that I’d been putting off buying for months, negotiated without ceremony, and left feeling like I’d participated in something genuinely transactional in the old sense.

The Triple Frontier monument — a concrete obelisk on the Paraguayan bank where the Iguazú empties into the Paraná — marks the spot where three countries meet, and it is worth visiting for the geography alone. From the obelisk, you can see the Argentine hito across one stretch of water and the Brazilian marco on the opposite bank, all three countries arrayed around a confluence that was once indigenous Guaraní territory long before any of the current borders existed. The river here is enormous and brown and deeply unhurried, moving toward Buenos Aires and the sea with the indifference of something that predates every border it crosses.

The city itself rewards a few hours of wandering away from the market district. There are Paraguayan street food stalls serving sopa paraguaya — a dense corn bread with cheese and onion that is nothing like soup despite its name — and tereré, the iced mate drunk here in the subtropical heat instead of the hot version consumed further south. Sitting with a tereré in the shade near the central plaza, watching the city perform its commercial function, I thought about how different the Guaraní relationship to this river system must have been before it became a border running through the territory of three nations. The river doesn’t seem to know it.

When to go: Ciudad del Este is manageable on any day, but weekdays are significantly less chaotic than weekends when the Brazilian day-tripper market swells. Carry small bills in Paraguayan guaraní, as the exchange rates on cards in the market are unfavorable. The Triple Frontier area is best visited in the late afternoon when the light falls across the rivers and the three markers photograph well from the observation terrace.