Paraneña Region Guide

Eastern Paraguay holds almost the whole country — nearly all of its people, its capital, its farmland and its most remarkable ruins.

The Jesuit missions are the reason most visitors come. For 150 years the Jesuits and the Guarani built self-governing towns here with stone churches, workshops, orchestras and printing presses, until Spain expelled the order in 1767. Santisima Trinidad and Jesus de Tavarangue are UNESCO-listed and almost always empty.

Asuncion is one of the oldest cities in South America, faded, humid and full of nineteenth-century facades.

The Itaipu dam on the Parana is among the largest power stations on earth.

And the remnants of the Atlantic Forest hold jaguar, harpy eagle and a startling density of birds.

The Jesuit missions

From Encarnacion. Santisima Trinidad is the largest and best preserved — a great red sandstone church, a vast plaza, the ranks of indigenous houses, and carved angels playing instruments still in place on the fallen stonework. Jesus de Tavarangue, a few kilometres away, was unfinished when the expulsion came and shows Moorish trefoil arches. Both are floodlit at night, which is worth timing for.

Asuncion

The Panteon de los Heroes, the old railway station with its early locomotives, the riverside Costanera, the Casa de la Independencia, and the palace on the waterfront.

Itaipu

The binational dam at Ciudad del Este, nearly eight kilometres across, with free tours and a night-lighting display.

Craft towns

Itagua for nanduti lace, Ita for pottery, Luque for silver and harps, Aregua for ceramics.

Nature

Ybycui national park’s waterfalls and forest, San Rafael for birds, and the lake at Ypacarai.

Paraguay is the most bilingual country in the Americas and the most self-contained.

Guarani

Uniquely in the hemisphere, an indigenous language is spoken by the great majority of the population, including people with no indigenous ancestry. Around nine in ten Paraguayans speak Guarani, it is co-official, and everyday speech mixes it with Spanish in a blend called jopara. It survived because the Jesuit missions used it, wrote it and printed in it, and because the country’s isolation preserved it.

Isolation

Landlocked, bypassed by immigration waves that reshaped its neighbours, and ruled for decades by dictators who sealed it off, Paraguay developed a culture of its own that outsiders often find opaque and inward-looking.

Terere

Cold mate shared from a horn, drunk continuously by everyone, everywhere. It is the single most visible social practice in the country.

Catholicism

Deeply held, with the Virgin of Caacupe as the national devotion and a pilgrimage that draws over a million people.

Family and pace

Slow, courteous and family-centred, with a long midday pause.

The Atlantic Forest here has largely gone. Eastern Paraguay has lost the great majority of its original forest to soy and cattle in half a century, and what survives is fragmented. The reserves — San Rafael, Mbaracayu, Ybycui — are what is left, and visiting them supports their protection directly.

Buy Guarani craft from the makers. Nanduti lace from Itagua, ao po’i embroidery from Yataity, filigree silver from Luque and the hand-thrown pottery of Ita are all made in specific towns, and buying there rather than in an Asuncion gift shop changes what the maker earns.

Indigenous communities including Mbya Guarani hold land under pressure from agribusiness; visit only with an invitation or a community guide.

At the missions, keep off the stonework and the carved blocks laid out on the ground.

Water and waste: infrastructure is thin outside the cities.

May to September is the best stretch: the dry season, cooler days of 22 to 28°C, and the only comfortable period for walking around ruins or forest.

June and July are coolest, and an occasional surazo from the south can bring a genuinely cold few days.

October to March is hot and humid, often above 38°C with heavy afternoon storms. Asuncion in January is hard work.

December brings the Caacupe pilgrimage on the 8th, which is the country’s largest annual gathering.

February is carnival month, biggest at Encarnacion.

The waterfalls and rivers are fullest from November to March, though access is harder.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

Paraguay is among the cheapest countries in South America. A good meal costs a few dollars, long-distance buses are inexpensive, and the UNESCO mission sites charge almost nothing for a ticket covering all of them.