Paraguayan frontier boomtown at the Triple Frontier, driven by border trade and nearby Itaipú Dam
Ciudad del Este is Paraguay's second city and the strangest place in the country — a chaotic frontier boomtown on the Paraná river, 327 km east of Asunción, where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet at the Triple Frontier. It was founded in 1957 to anchor the Paraguayan side of the border, and ballooned in the 1980s and 1990s into one of South America's biggest contraband bazaars. Electronics, knock-off perfume, counterfeit watches and bootleg DVDs pour across the Friendship Bridge from Brazil every day; on a busy Saturday you can barely move on Avenida San Blas.
It is, to be blunt, not a pretty city. It is crowded, hot, polluted, famously unsafe after dark, and most travellers use it only as a hinge between Iguazu Falls (on the Argentine and Brazilian sides) and the Itaipú, the second-largest hydroelectric dam in the world, which straddles the Paraná a few kilometres north of town. Both are genuinely world-class sights and easy half-day trips. If you come here, come for them, keep your valuables hidden, and don't linger downtown after sundown.
What the city does have — beyond sheer commercial spectacle — is a surprisingly cosmopolitan character. The Arab community, many of Lebanese descent, is economically dominant and architecturally visible: the Mezquita del Este is the largest mosque in Paraguay. The Friendship Bridge itself is worth walking across once, just to experience the procession of Brazilian shoppers hauling goods in both directions.
Guide
Activities
Paraguay's bookable supply is unusual, and it is worth knowing the shape of it before you start emailing.
More than half of what a traveller can actually book here belongs to an institution rather than a company: SENATUR runs the Jesuit missions and the Asunción walking tour, ITAIPU runs the dam, a Mennonite co-operative runs the Chaco museums, a diocese runs two of the best museums in the south, and conservation NGOs run the reserves. Those bodies answer landlines and email, in office hours.
The private operators are a different story. Every one of them found in this sweep answers WhatsApp, from a 1986 receptive agency in the capital to a four-room lodge in a mission village.
So: for anything state-run, write or telephone, and expect a slower answer. For anything privately run, message it.
Guide
Shopping
Ciudad del Este has been called the biggest shopping mall in South America, and for better or worse it lives up to the nickname. The heart of it is Avenida San Blas, a kilometre of stalls and arcades selling cheap electronics, imitation designer gear, perfume, alcohol and tobacco, all subject to Paraguay's famously lax import duties. Brazilians and Argentines cross the Friendship Bridge every day to shop here.
Two warnings. First, a lot of the goods are counterfeit or stolen, and real deals on serious electronics are rarer than they used to be. Second, pickpocketing is rampant — keep your passport and most of your cash in the hotel safe, and carry only what you can afford to lose. Leather goods from Paraguay's cattle country are the genuine bargain.