Ten Dollar Holla

Bad TV (and bad movies on TV) is soo much better when you're in some lawless border town that borders on not just one country but two (that's three countries sharing the same border, thus the triple border region that is Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina). "Hey, I'm not a lesbian, I'm bi-sexual," says the hot blonde and only female member of Average Joe's Dodgeball Team as she finishes making out with some other hot red-head and grabs Vince Vaughn by the shirt and mad kisses him too. They defeat all the odds (50-1 underdogs) and take out Ben Stiller's team and win in the finals in Vegas.

Now I'm watching the Simpons dubbed in Spanish and the phone rings. I imagine its Ethan or eNano as he is known down here which translates to a cross between dwarf and midget, calling from NYC baked off his ass and wanting to talk some more about his pending return to Buenos Aires. He'll be second in command of the USS 'Dos Polares' or 'Two Poles' Antarctic exploration team based here in BA, which we successfully resurrected from the ship grave yard and kept afloat a few months back. Plus no one else knows where we are staying in caudate del Este, at least not which room.

"Hola," I answer.

"Si, yo soy Aldolfo," says the mysterious voice on the other end. "Sam just left en collectivo [bus]," the voice continues but only now in pretty good English.

"He sold his car?" I ask.

"Yeah, we make a good business," says Alfredo.

I had received a note from the front desk upon my return from the car lot saying Sam was with some guy and they had driven 112km. outside of the city to some Ranch (which turned out to be a German Mennonite colony) to sell his car. It sounded a little sketchy but what was I gonna do - there was nothing too do at this point except to continue to watch the Simpons.

"How much did he sell it for?" I ask.

"$1,200USD," says Adolfo.

"And when is he going to be back into town?" I ask again, trying to get all the info I can up front just in case something goes wrong, or already did thinking that now this NOS is riding on a bus in the middle of nowhere with all those greenbacks on him.

"Maybe about an hour, hour and a half," says Aldolfo again in decent English.

"Thanks for the call," I say and hang up, taking a sip off of the Old Smuggler whisky that I smuggled into Paraguay and add a little Coke to it and smile. We can't get Makers down here even if we could afford it. At least the car is gone and off his hands, mind and heart and we can do Ciudad del Este up right on a Friday night despite the repeated warnings.

Outside dusk was approaching and the city swiftly shuts down right at dark leaving its streets deserted and dangerous. I headed out anyways and bought a small Paraguayan flag, changed some money on the street and kept my wits about me despite a few warnings that its not safe to be walking around alone and I didn't even have my camera with me. What a great country!