Chaco Region Guide

The Paraguayan Chaco is one of the emptiest places in South America and one of the strangest.

It covers around 60 per cent of Paraguay and holds about two per cent of its people — a flat, thorny, semi-arid plain called the Green Hell by the soldiers who fought a war over it in the 1930s.

In the middle of it sit three Mennonite colonies, founded by German-speaking pastoralists from Russia and Canada in the 1920s and 30s, who built productive dairy towns out of scrub and still speak Plautdietsch.

The wildlife is the other reason: jaguar, puma, giant anteater, tapir, peccary and around 500 bird species, in Defensores del Chaco and the reserves, with far fewer visitors than anywhere comparable.

This is a destination for people who want somewhere genuinely remote.

The Mennonite colonies

Filadelfia, Loma Plata and Neuland, about 450 kilometres from the capital. Each has a museum explaining the settlement, a cooperative dairy, wide grid streets, and a co-op supermarket that is the best-stocked shop for hundreds of kilometres. The Jakob Unger museum at Filadelfia covers both the colonisation and the Chaco war.

Wildlife

Defensores del Chaco, Paraguay’s largest national park at over 7,000 square kilometres, with Cerro Leon rising from the plain. Access requires a permit, a convoy-capable vehicle and self-sufficiency in fuel and water.

Easier alternatives: the Campo Maria and Laguna Capitan reserves near the colonies, with flamingos on saline lagoons, and the Fortin Toledo reserve, which keeps a population of the Chacoan peccary — a species known only from fossils until living animals were found here in 1971.

The Trans-Chaco road

The drive itself, straight for hundreds of kilometres through thorn scrub, is the experience for many visitors.

War sites

Trenches and fortines from the 1930s survive along the old front.

The Chaco holds three populations living largely separate lives in the same landscape.

Mennonites

Around 30,000 German-speaking Mennonites live in the colonies, descendants of groups who came from the Soviet Union and Canada in the 1920s and 30s after Paraguay offered land, exemption from military service and the right to run their own schools in German. They built roads, wells and dairies in country that had defeated everyone else, and their cooperatives now supply a large share of Paraguay’s dairy and beef. They speak Plautdietsch at home, High German in church, and Spanish outside.

Indigenous peoples

Ayoreo, Nivacle, Enlhet, Angaite, Guarani Nandeva and others, some of whom worked on the colonies and settled around them, some still holding traditional territory. Land rights are the central political issue of the region.

Paraguayans from the east

Ranch workers, soldiers, traders and officials, who mostly regard a Chaco posting as hardship.

The war

The 1932-35 conflict with Bolivia is the founding national story here and is commemorated in every town.

Deforestation here is among the fastest on earth. The Chaco is being cleared for cattle at a rate that has made it one of the world’s deforestation hotspots, and the visible bulldozed edges are not incidental scenery. Understanding this is part of visiting responsibly.

Indigenous peoples — Ayoreo, Nivacle, Enlhet, Guarani Nandeva and others — hold land here, and some Ayoreo groups remain in voluntary isolation, the last such people outside the Amazon. Their territory is closed absolutely; do not attempt to approach or seek contact.

Community and indigenous enterprises exist — craft cooperatives selling caraguata fibre bags, and guides from the communities — and buying from them directly matters a great deal in an economy this marginal.

Water is the region’s defining scarcity. Use as little as you can; in many places it is trucked or caught from roofs.

Wildlife: no baiting, no spotlighting, and keep to tracks.

May to September is the dry season and the only sensible time for most visitors: cooler, passable roads, and wildlife concentrated at the remaining waterholes, which makes it far easier to see.

June and July are the coolest, with pleasant days around 25 to 30°C and occasional cold snaps when a surazo wind arrives from the south and the temperature falls sharply.

October to April is the wet season and brutally hot — frequently above 42°C, with a record for South America set here. Rain turns the unpaved roads into impassable clay, and travel beyond the highway becomes impossible.

The wet months do bring spectacular birdlife and green landscape, if you can reach it.

Whenever you go, this is not a casual trip; it needs planning and usually a guide.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

Paraguay is among the cheapest countries in South America, but the Chaco is not cheap to travel in: the distances, the fuel and the need for a capable vehicle are what cost.