Discover Paraneña

The Paranéña region is everything east of the Paraguay river, and although it is the smaller half of the country it holds around ninety-seven per cent of the population. The land is rolling, red-earthed and green, watered well enough for cattle and soy, and it ends at the Paraná river on the Brazilian and Argentine borders.

Asunción, on the river, is the capital and one of the oldest cities in South America — founded in 1537, and the base from which much of the southern cone was settled. To the south-east lie the ruins of the Jesuit reducciones at Trinidad and Jesús, mission towns where Guaraní communities of several thousand lived, farmed and made music under Jesuit governance until Spain expelled the order in 1767; both are UNESCO World Heritage sites and both are almost empty of visitors.

On the Paraná itself is the Itaipú dam, shared with Brazil and for decades the largest power station in the world by output. Ciudad del Este, beside it, is one of the busiest trading points in South America and is half an hour from the Iguazú falls on the Argentine and Brazilian side. What remains of the Atlantic Forest, once covering this whole region, survives in reserves such as San Rafael. Summers are very hot and humid; May to September is the comfortable window.