Paraguay Geography & Climate

Paraguay covers about 406,750 square kilometres in the middle of the continent, bordered by Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia, with no coast. The Paraguay River runs down its middle and is the country's organising fact.

East of the river is subtropical: rolling hills, red earth, farmland and what remains of the Atlantic Forest, which once covered it and has been largely cleared. Almost the entire population lives here, and so do Asunción, Encarnación and Ciudad del Este.

West of it is the Gran Chaco — flat, hot, thorny scrub and seasonal wetland covering around 60% of the national territory and holding under 3% of its people. In the wet season parts of it flood; in the dry season it is dust. It is also one of the last large wild landscapes in South America, and one of the fastest-disappearing.

Paraguay has no mountains to speak of; its high point is around 840 metres. What it has instead is water, and it has converted that into power: the Itaipú Dam on the Brazilian border is among the largest hydroelectric plants in the world, and together with Yacyretá it means Paraguay generates far more electricity than it consumes and exports the surplus, running on essentially all renewable power.

Two countries divided by a river

The Paraguay river splits the country almost exactly in half and into two entirely different worlds. East of it, the Paranena region is rolling red-earth country, well watered and fertile, holding around 98 per cent of the population. West of it, the Chaco is a flat semi-arid plain covering roughly 60 per cent of the territory with about two per cent of the people.

Landlocked but navigable

Paraguay has no coast, but the Paraguay and Parana rivers connect it to the Atlantic through Argentina and Uruguay, and its ocean-going trade moves by barge convoy — one of the largest such fleets in the world. That river system is the reason the country exists where it does and a constant factor in its relations with its neighbours.

Itaipu

The Parana is dammed at Itaipu on the Brazilian border, generating more electricity in a typical year than almost any other power station on earth and supplying the large majority of Paraguay’s own consumption, with a substantial surplus sold to Brazil.

Paraguay is subtropical, with two real seasons rather than four, and the seasons are southern-hemisphere: summer December to February, winter June to August.

Summer is the defining problem. Asunción sits in the mid-to-high 30s with heavy humidity, and the Chaco regularly exceeds 45°C — the hottest readings in South America. Business shuts in the early afternoon and daily life moves to dawn and dusk.

Winter is mild and pleasant, generally 15-25°C, with occasional cold snaps when a surazo blows up from the south and temperatures fall near freezing for a few days. Frost is possible in the far south.

Rain falls year-round in the east, heaviest from October to April, and Ciudad del Este is genuinely wet. The Chaco is semi-arid — 50 to 100 centimetres a year, most of it in summer, and when it does rain the unpaved roads become impassable rather than merely difficult.

Subtropical east, semi-arid west

The east is humid subtropical, with 1,300 to 1,800 millimetres of rain a year falling in every month and no dry season. Moving west across the Chaco, rainfall drops steadily to under 400 millimetres in the far north-west, and the vegetation changes from palm savanna to dense thorn forest.

Heat

Summer, from October to March, is hot throughout and severe in the Chaco, where temperatures above 40°C are routine and the highest reliably recorded in South America was measured. Humidity in the east makes it feel worse; the dry west is at least dry.

The surazo

Because the land is flat all the way to Patagonia, cold fronts sweep north unobstructed and can drop the temperature by twenty degrees within hours at any time of year, occasionally bringing frost to a subtropical country. It is the single most surprising feature of the Paraguayan climate.

When to go

May to September is cooler, drier and far more comfortable.