Cascavel

The road finally reaches the western edge of Paraná today, following BR-277 almost the whole way from Guarapuava to Foz do Iguaçu. It's another long highway day, but the landscape shifts from the Campos Gerais into open agricultural country. The reward at the end isn't the Falls yet — that's tomorrow — but something built on the same river: Itaipu.

Across Western Paraná

The road settles onto BR-277, the highway that cuts clean across the state, passing through Candói and Laranjeiras do Sul as the country opens into rolling farmland. This is soy country — Paraná's single largest crop, and the west its heaviest-producing region, with Cascavel and neighboring Toledo regularly topping the state's rankings. What corn shares the fields with soy here mostly never leaves the region: this stretch of Paraná also drives one of Brazil's biggest poultry and hog industries, Toledo alone leading the country in swine production, and the second corn harvest exists largely to feed it.

By late morning comes Cascavel itself, an important hub of that same agricultural economy — lunch and fuel both taken here, timed early rather than late, since the afternoon at Itaipu runs on a fixed schedule that leaves no room to linger.

West of Cascavel, BR-277 continues through the heart of the farm country, past Céu Azul and São Miguel do Iguaçu as the border region comes into view. There's nothing to stop for along this stretch; the road itself carries the day, steadily trading the interior for the Paraná River.