Essential Spanish phrases

The Paraguayan ID card. Residence gets you one and nothing else substitutes for it — not a bank account, not a municipal driving licence, not a postpaid phone line.

Migraciones' regional residence office. Ciudad del Este has one, on Avda. Rogelio Benítez casi 4 de Mayo — which means you can file your whole residence case here rather than in Asunción.

The dense commercial grid running down to the Puente de la Amistad — the shopping city that made Ciudad del Este famous. It is a workplace, not a neighbourhood; almost nobody who works there lives there.

Three currencies circulate in daily commerce here. Shop prices are commonly in dollars or reais and change is given in guaraníes. Learn the day's rate before you shop.

Addresses here are given as kilometre markers along the Ruta Internacional heading away from the border. Locals navigate entirely by them, and the higher the number, the more residential and the quieter.

The state electricity utility. Itaipú's generating hall is fifteen kilometres up the river at Hernandarias, which does not stop the summer bill from being the household's biggest.

A Brazilian shopper crossing to buy in bulk. The whole rhythm of the microcentro — opening hours, traffic on the bridge, which days are dead — is set by them.

The binational dams pay royalties to the state, and a share is earmarked for municipalities and departments through FONACIDE. Ciudad del Este publishes its programme — it is a real and unusual line in a Paraguayan municipal budget.

The daily minimum wage — Gs 117,077 since 1 July 2026. Migraciones' fees are quoted in jornales, so the price of your residence carnet moves when the wage does.

The everyday Spanish–Guaraní mix. In Alto Paraná add Portuguese to it: Paraguay's 2002 census found Portuguese was the usual household language in 2.9% of homes nationally and 5% of rural ones, and the eastern border is where that lives.

Cold yerba mate with iced water and crushed herbs, shared from one guampa around a circle. In Alto Paraná's heat it is less a custom than a coping strategy.

'How are you?' in Guaraní, co-official with Spanish. In a trilingual border city, the language you open with is a signal — Guaraní marks you as Paraguayan rather than a visitor from across the bridge.