Iguazu Falls and un poco de Paraguay....

Finished my three week tour of duty at the farm. Got in the bus to Puerto Iguazu and arrived in the afternoon and checked in at Stop Hostel. Next morning I went to the actual falls. Pretty amazing, not as tall as Niagara but 1000x more amazing. El Garganto del Diablo. It's a 82-meter-high, 150-meter-wide and 700-meter-long waterfall. There's some kind of nonsense about negative ions which are these molecules created by waterfalls and other natural occurring things that give you a good natural high when exposed to them...and I can attest to it actually working.

Anyway, I wanted to go to Paraguay after this because my plan was to go thru Paraguay, take a cargo boat up the Rio Paraguay and then get into Bolivia. Only problem is, Paraguay, unlike every other S.A country I've been in makes Americans pay a $65 visa fee. Not bad in it of itself but you can't get it at the border and the Paraguayan consulate in Puerto Iquazu doesn't grant the visas. Meaning that I have to go to Posadas to get it which is 6 hours east of Iguazu in Argentina. Anyway, after traveling to Posadas, staying in a hostel there for a night, jumping thru hoops to get the visa (including standing in line at a casa de cambio for an hour because the consulate wouldn't accept anything BUT U.S money) I got the visa and took the trip across the border to Paraguay. Got into Asuncion, Paraguay two days ago and it's an...interesting city. It's pretty empty save for some people walking around, the peasants in the shanty town behind the palace of law and the pigs going thru garbage on the street. Don't get me wrong, I like it here alot. It's just unlike any capital city I've been into yet. However, I'd hate to see what a non capital city looks like in Paraguay.....