Early on in the trip, we had decided that we would finish in Paraguay, not because it is necessarily one of the most interesting countries in South America, but because we had heard that it was possible to sell our car there, something which was not possible for legal reasons in Argentina and Chile. However, we had not actually heard any specific stories of someone successfully doing that, and there were rumors that Paraguay was longer as corrupt as it once was. Apparently, new laws forbade the import of cars older than 10 years, and the Safari was already on its 12th!.

To drive a car into most Latin American countries, some sort of tourist vehicle importation permit needs to be issued, and it was the same case in Paraguay. However, if we properly procured one of these at the border, it would contain all our personal details as well as the details of the car (VIN numbers and so on), which we weren’t sure we wanted the government to have. To find out how we might sneak the car in and sell it, Jono and Ewa dropped Nina and I off at the border, and we went in to investigate for a day while they waited on the Argentinian side.

The border crossing itself was a flashback to Central America. It was hot and humid, and the pavement at the border was potholed to the max and covered in mud. A long disorderly jumble of trucks waited to cross. Touts, money-changers, and other sketchy-looking people rode around on rusty bicycles through the dirt and tried to peddle various customs services. A collection of trailers and run-down buildings with dirty service windows housed the customs and immigration personnel. The bridge across the border was probably one of the sketchiest of the whole trip – the grated metal bridge surface was completely rusted and falling apart, and broken through in many sections. It was basically necessary to walk on the support beams, as stepping on the grate between them meant risking falling through and into a tributary of the Rio Paraguay.

Fun with passports
To make things a little more challenging, I tried to exit Argentina on my Canadian passport and enter Paraguay on my Polish/European passport, since Canadians need a visa for Paraguay. Not so straightforward it turns out.
After stamping out of Argentina on my Canadian passport, I crossed the bridge and went to Paraguayan immigration to get my entry stamp in the Polish passport. Unfortunately, they refused to stamp it, claiming that it needed to have an Argentina exit stamp in it for them to do so. After discussing the situation for 10 minutes through the dirty service window on the outside of the building, I was led into an office inside, where I was offered the stamp in exchange for $50 USD. Negotiations on price were unfruitful, and I thought $50 was a little steep for that, so I decided to try getting around it by asking the Argentinians for favours instead.

First, I went to the Argentinian immigration building that dealt with exiting the country. Here again, I failed to convince the personnel doing the exit stamps to give me just an exit stamp, without having a matching entry stamp. My last chance then was to try to get an Argentinian entry stamp first (without a Paraguayan exit stamp), for which I could then get the corresponding exit. I went back across the bridge to the Argentinian immigration building doing the entry stamps, to see if they could just stamp me in. Fortunately, they were a little more understanding, and although it took about 20 minutes and discussions with four different people, in the end I got my stamp into Argentina.

Armed with an entry stamp in my passport now, I crossed the bridge again, went to Argentinian exit immigration, and got my stamp out (luckily there were multiple windows, so I got a different official than before). Last stop now was the Paraguay entrance immigration window where I had been asked for $50. The same official was there, now a little disappointed to have lost his opportunity to make some quick cash. I presented my passport, which should have all been in order now as far as he was concerned. Too bad we had talked earlier though, and now he knew what I had done. So he took my passport, and walked over to his Argentinian colleagues. They promptly closed all the service windows and the entire contingent of Argentinian and Paraguayan immigration officials retired into a meeting room inside the building to comtemplate the situation.

Ten minutes later, the Paraguayan official came out and asked for me to join them. Paraguayan and Argentinian immigration officials sat in a run-down meeting room drinking mate (Argentinian tea) and debated the situation. After spending 10 minutes discussing what I’m trying to do, what nationality I “feel” I am, where I live and work, and a bunch of very irrelevant questions, the most senior Argentine official declared that they will cancel one of my Argentinian exit stamps. It took another five minutes for me to convince him otherwise, after which time he basically gave up. I think he knew I wasn’t going to illegally immigrate to Argentina (and I was leaving at this moment anyway), and so handed back the passport. The Paraguayan official then had no choice but to stamp my passport, and was nice enough at this point to also give me a tourist map of Asuncion (impressive!). It was dark by this point, so Nina and I changed a few dollars for Paraguayan Guarani and caught a collectivo (bus) into town.