The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Sample the best of South America in a single country
Little-visited Paraguay has echoes of its more familiar neighbours but is totally unique. Chris Moss reveals its riches
The baroque churches beneath emerald-hued hills remind me of Bolivia. Roadside grills serving every cut imaginable make me think of Argentina or Brazil. The laidback couples sharing gourds of mate and kisses in the park could be in Uruguay. The American malls and big fat pickups smack of Santiago de Chile.
It makes sense that Paraguay – landlocked, centrally located, often invaded – should share traits with its neighbours. The vast Chaco region, wide-open pampas and expanses of tangled Atlantic forest indicate topographical continuities. It is less logical that so few European tourists visit this subtropical nation, which has a permanent summer; as we trudge through winter sludge towards zero in January, the capital Asunción basks in temperatures upwards of 25C.
Visitors from the UK number only a few hundred, while only a few thousand Europeans take the short flight from São Paulo or Buenos Aires. Small by South American standards, Paraguay is bigger than Germany and almost twice the size of Great Britain. It is economically quite stable and relatively peaceful and, like many places unused to mass tourism, has a friendliness and authenticity you might struggle to find in other countries.
I have just made my seventh visit. Why do I keep going back? Well, it intrigues me. Paraguay has seen some extreme historical events, from the Triple Alliance War – which wiped out most of the male population – to the 1932-1935 Chaco War with Bolivia over oil resources that never existed. Equally importantly, I continue to make new discoveries which make Paraguay a genuine undertourism gem. Here are seven reasons why you should give it a chance, either as a sole destination or as an add-on to a tour of one of the countries bordering it.
Go on a mission
Paraguay’s one Unesco World Heritage Site is actually two: the missions of La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná and Jesús de Tavarangue. They are close enough to visit in an afternoon, and while the ruins are roofless and the sacred art has been relocated, they evoke the scale and substance of the Jesuit utopian experiment that landed in this region at the end of the 17th century and lasted until 1767.
Red stone walls mark out priests’ quarters, schools where the native Guaraní were taught catechism and music, orchards and the main churches. The latter would have been the largest and most ornate buildings for miles around. Son et lumière shows retell the story of how the Jesuits offered protection to their flocks from marauding slavers from Brazil, converted and cooperated with them. The town of Santa María de Fe, founded as a mission in 1647, has no imposing ruins but is very much alive and has a communitarian, spiritual quality that might well link back to Jesuit times. It is a good place to stay the night, with a small hotel, a good collection of sacred sculptures – by European masters and their local understudies – and a plaza where locals relax after dusk in the company of a troop of howler monkeys. I attended Sunday evening mass and it was informal, relaxed and convivial.
When I visited there was a power cut at the museum, but seeing the life-size saints using my guide’s phone-torch was amazingly dramatic. The focused but wavering beam, the looming shadows and the total quiet were suggestive of something deep and ancient. After all, the original Guaraní worshippers would have seen Saint Michael killing the devil (dragons were too much like caimans) under flickering candlelight.
Learn to drink yerba mate
One of the biggest contributions the Jesuits made was to the tradition of the South American cuppa – or gourd, rather. Native populations had been picking wild yerba mate leaves for centuries, but the science-loving priests worked out how to cultivate it in commercially viable quantities. Today no self-respecting southern Paraguayan leaves home without his mate kit and a huge thermos of tepid or cool water.
The Selecta yerba factory in Bella Vista – “the capital of mate” – has a great little museum, tasting bar and guided tour that tell the story of the tea as a cultural symbol. When the Jesuits left, they took their scientific knowhow with them – but Friedrich Neumann, a German immigrant from Nueva Germania (an “Aryan” community established in 1887), is credited with “rediscovering” the method of germinating mate and starting a new boom. The founders of Selecta, in 1942, were the Brönstrup family, also of German descent.
A trio of museums
Sapucai was once the Crewe of Paraguay. Steam-powered trains between Asunción and Encarnación on the Argentinian border were maintained here from 1894 until 1999. Large sheds are littered with rusting hulks of rolling stock and machinery made in Glasgow, Halifax, Sheffield and Newport, and there is a reconstruction of the offices. A few tumbledown houses still stand in Villa Inglesa, where the engineers lived.
In Asunción, the Ministry of Defence Museum gives the lowdown on the Triple Alliance and Chaco wars, with maps, uniforms, cabinets of armaments, torn and bloodied flags and some shocking casualty statistics: as many as 300,000 Paraguayan soldiers are believed to have died. The nearby Recoleta cemetery is almost as grandiose as the Buenos Aires necropolis which shares its name; a key attraction is the lofty mausoleum of Madama Eliza Lynch, the Cork-born wife of president Francisco Solano López, who waged war against Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.
More up to date, but even darker, the Museo de las Memorias in Asunción focuses on the atrocities perpetrated during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner between 1954 and 1989. The story is told through photographs, weapons, a replica of a cell and letters from American military personnel offering helpful advice on eliminating and torturing members of the public. In the Plaza de los Desaparecidos, downtown, is a “contramonumento” to Stroessner; the creator, Carlos Colombino took a “heroic” statue of the tyrant and had it crushed between blocks of concrete. The twisted forms and grasping hand say it all.
Find wildlife and wetlands
According to the World Tourism Organisation, Paraguay is home to 67 species of mammal, 670 species of bird, 230 species of fish, 117 species of reptile, 63 species of amphibian and more than 100,000 species of invertebrate.
To see a lot of these, you have to go to the hot, arid, tangly, snake-infested Chaco or the untamed, hard-to-access Paraguayan Pantanal – the wetlands are best known as a Brazilian destination but are in fact shared with Bolivia and Paraguay. Either trip is quite a feat, but the Ybicuí national park is easily accessible from the capital or from the Missions area, and is a great place to see subtropical flora and dozens of bird species. Leisurely twitchers will enjoy seeing hawks, owls, egrets, tanagers and parakeets on roadsides and in gardens. One caveat: Paraguay is a soya superpower. Habitat destruction is visible all over the country as the “green gold” replaces jungle, cattle-rearing, native fruits and mandioca, and exports are prioritised over ecology and health.
See the rise of Asunción
Central Asunción is of historic interest and a half-day exploring the government buildings, old train station, plazas and waterfront is highly recommended. To see the smarter, gentrified face of the city, head out to districts such as Recoleta and Villa Mora. Residential streets are walkable and fairly traffic-free off the main avenues. La Misión is a bona fide, rather elegant, boutique hotel, while Factoría is an industrial-chic stunner.
Middle-class locals seem to eat in shopping malls, but hotels in Asunción do great food and there are some small auteur restaurants. These include Pakuri, which does gourmet twists on street food such as sopa paraguaya (similar to corn bread) and fish dishes; classy Mburicao; and Tierra Colorada. There are also churrascarias (grills).
Embrace idiosyncrasies
Paraguay is a place of distinctive quirks: unlike its neighbours, where pre-Colombian languages have been largely erased, here the indigenous Guaraní language is still widely spoken. The Paraguayan diatonic harp remains the national instrument, and folk music is informed by European and South American traditions.
But for all these idiosyncrasies, some Paraguayans have a chip on their shoulder. My guide-and-driver, José Acosta, spent hours comparing his country favourably with Argentina (“chaotic, self-aggrandising”), Brazil (“imperialistic”) and other neighbours. Paraguay, he insisted, introduced the beef-based diet to southern South America when it imported six cows and a bull. Paraguay was rich and powerful until the others got jealous and declared war. Paraguay is the true home of mate. Paraguay has a bright future – so Brazil will want to invade it just like Putin did Ukraine.
When I mentioned to long-term expat resident Margaret Hebblethwaite (who has done much to support tourism in Santa María) that Paraguay is the heart of South America, a collage of other countries, she responded: “Maybe, but they don’t care about us in those places. The best thing about here is there are no gringos.” I have to agree – though a few more won’t do any harm, should you decide to visit.