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The next day I did exactly what I'd planned and set my alarm for 6.30am. I got up, had breakfast and left, the beginning of an incredible day! I got to where the blockade had been for the last week at around 7.20 a.m. hoping to have got there to early for the farmers. They were committed to their cause though and we're already there. I waited around for around 20 minutes until a surge of people trying to get past went down the left hand side. I snuck through on the right where only 1 woman saw me and I simply walked through. On the other side I talked to the army members who were there. I asked them if they could do anything about it and they told me they were simply there to calm matters, even though there was a brawl breaking out as we spoke! I left and caught a taxi, haggled down to 30 peses (around a fiver) 17km to the park. When I got there the man at the entrance told me there was no services inside the park because the staff couldn't get there because of the blockade. He then told me it was free entrance and I was the 3rd person to have arrived so I shook his hand and went in. I headed straight for the jungle trek, where the trees over the path and the gloomy weather meant it was quite dark. I saw signs saying things like you may encounter dangerous animals and a picture of a snake, so I was quite on edge! As I got deeper into the jungle, and it got darker, and I saw more spiders, I got more scared and was jumping at the slightest of noises like a leaf under my foot! The trek took me to a small pool of water in a clearing which was really nice and I relaxed there for a while. I saw all kinds of wildlife on the walk, spiders, monkeys, birds, butterflies, and these guinea pig like creatures too. After the walk I bumped into Jenny who had snuck past the blockade by going through the jungle to the side and was about to start the walk herself. Then I met up with Gussy and we saw the Argentinian views of the falls. They looked even more extreme from up close and even though we'd seen some the day before, there was something mesmerizing about them which meant we spent ages just looking at them (and taking lots of photos which should be uploaded soon). Then, it started to rain. Really heavily. Like torrential tropical storms with lightning and thunder. We took cover under an information booth with a load of other people and made friends with some French and Israeli people. After the rain eased off, after more than 20 minutes of solid heavy rain, we ran back to the entrance and managed to get a taxi back, and found Jenny back at the hostal. We all fell asleep for the afternoon and headed into town for a meal that evening.
The next day we spent relaxing in the sun by the pool at the hostal before checking out very late, which made the owner of the hostal really annoyed, and then got a bus to Ciudad del Este. We only went there (only 1 hour into Paraguay from Iguazu) because we had to change there to get to Asuncion, and we had to wait for the bus for 2 and a half hours so decided we couldn't be bothered to do it all in one go. We got to Ciudad del Este to find more torrential rain and walked through the flooded streets in our flip flops and with our rucksacks to a basic and cheap hotel and relaxed in front of the TV in our room for a while. We then had pizza for dinner before a welcome evening of lying in front of a tv watching films (Borat was on!).
Then today we checked out early and got the 5 hour bus here to Asuncion, found a hotel (there are no hostels due to lack of travellers here) and then headed out for some food and then here to an internet cafe where I've been online for way too long. We plan on heading to Concepcion and then to a national park near there to see some more animals there!
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