Category: Paraguay

The addictive hustle and bustle of Chile’s second-most populous city, teeming with industry, port services and universities make ‘Conce’ worthy of a touchdown. While attractive it isn’t – earthquakes in 1939 and 1960 obliterated the historical buildings – downtown has pleasant plazas, pedestrian malls and guzzling nightlife, owed to the student population.

Encarnación is a cut-rate shopping center, the heart of the Paraguayan Carnaval and the gateway to the nearby Jesuit ruins at Trinidad and Jesús. The old center used to function on the lower ground near the river. When the nearby Yacyretá Dam was constructed, businesses and offices relocated to higher ground in preparation of the flooding which was (and is yet) to occur. Years later, the sluice gates have not yet been opened. Currently occupying the old town among decaying public buildings is a massive tawdry bazaar. Among the chaos is the Fería Municipal market, great for a cheap eat. On higher ground, the pleasant and functional modern town has excellent shops, a pleasant plaza and modern facilities.

If Filadelfia were a painting, it would have been done by surrealist Salvador Dalí. This neat Mennonite community, the service and administrative center of Fernheim, resembles a suburb of Munich plonked in the middle of a red desert. Geometrically perfect homes line the streets in an orderly grid, with dusty roads and miles of Chaco wilderness extending endlessly beyond. The town lacks a real center; its soul is the giant cooperative which trades the cream of the Paraguayan crop – dairy products. Although there are indigenous day laborers from nearby pueblos, most of the town’s inhabitants are European descendants, and Guten tag is a regular greeting. It’s a captivating, if not a little strange, experience.

The Gran Chaco is the place to escape the crowds and experience raw wilderness. This vast plain – roughly divided into the Low Chaco (west of Asunción), Middle Chaco (the Mennonite region) and High Chaco (low density thorny scrub to the north) – encompasses the entire western half of Paraguay and stretches into Argentina and Bolivia. During the rainy season large tracts become swampy plains, while in dry weather it’s an arid dustbowl with harsh thorn forest.

Literally across the street from Ponta Porã in Brazil is the nondescript former shopping border town of Pedro Juan Caballero (‘PJC’). Don’t aim to get stranded here on a weekend or public holiday as it ain’t all ‘party hearty’; the only real reasons to shack up here are en route to/from Brazil or to visit the attractive Parque Nacional Cerro Corá.

Paraguay’s southernmost region – east of the Río Paraguay – is home to some of the country’s most important historical sites. The Jesuit ruins, national parks, the largest dam in the world, and one of the continent’s busiest border crossings make this an eclectic and fascinating area to visit.