Paraguay

The UNESCO-listed mission ruins of La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná (founded 1706) and Jesús de Tavarangue (founded 1685) near Encarnación are Paraguay's signature heritage stop. The 17th-18th-century reducciones jesuíticas were self-sufficient Guaraní communities under Jesuit guidance — by the time of the Jesuit expulsion from the Spanish empire in 1767 the system was producing baroque architecture, music and art that combined European training with Guaraní craftsmanship. Trinidad holds the most spectacular surviving ruins, with carved sandstone friezes of musician angels, bell towers and a vast roofless church; Jesús has the more evocative atmosphere of an unfinished ruin. Both sit 28 km apart and can be combined in a half-day trip from Encarnación, which has its own cleaned-up Costanera riverfront and hosts the country's biggest carnival each January-February. Sound-and-light shows operate at Trinidad some evenings.

The Itaipú Dam, on the Paraná River between Paraguay and Brazil opposite Foz do Iguaçu, is the world's second-largest hydroelectric project after China's Three Gorges. Completed in 1984 and binationally operated, the 196-metre-high dam stretches almost 8 km across the Paraná with 20 generating units and a reservoir that extends 170 km upstream. Free guided tours from the Paraguayan-side visitor centre take in the spillway viewpoint, the powerhouse and the evening illumination of the dam structure. Ciudad del Este, the host city, doubles as a famous border-shopping town and the Paraguayan side of the Triple Frontier — most travellers combine the Itaipú visit with a 15-km hop across the Friendship Bridge to the Brazilian and Argentine sides of the Iguazú Falls.

Asunción, founded in 1537 on the east bank of the Paraguay River, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities of the Americas. The small historic core — the Casa de la Independencia (the 1772 house where the 14-15 May 1811 independence movement was hatched), the 19th-century Cabildo (now a cultural museum), the Panteón Nacional de los Héroes (a small Italian-marble Pantheon honouring López and the Triple Alliance War heroes), the Plaza de los Héroes — sits inside a low-rise capital that opens onto the Costanera river walk, the lively Mercado 4 for tereré supplies and snack-cart food, and the surrounding Carmelitas neighbourhood for evening dining.

The Circuito de Oro is a 200-km loop of small Franciscan and Jesuit-era towns within an hour or two of Asunción. Areguá, on Lake Ypacaraí, is the colourful pottery town with strawberry fields and a steep cobbled main street; Itauguá is the centre of ñandutí lace, the spiderweb embroidery on display at the annual July Festival; Caacupé holds Paraguay's most important pilgrimage basilica with the great 8 December feast of the Virgin of Caacupé; Yaguarón has the country's most extraordinary Franciscan baroque interior, with hand-carved altars and ceilings by Guaraní craftsmen; Atyrá and Tobatí round off the circuit. A classic 1–2 day trip out of Asunción by hired car or organised tour.

Western Paraguay — the Gran Chaco — is one of South America's last frontiers: 60 percent of the national territory, only 3 percent of the population, dry thorn forest and palm savanna stretching to the Bolivian border. The long Trans-Chaco Highway (Ruta 9) runs almost 800 km from Asunción to the Bolivian border, with the German-speaking Mennonite colonies of Filadelfia, Loma Plata and Neuland — settled by Plautdietsch- and German-speaking Mennonites from Russia and Canada in the 1920s and 1930s, still running their own dairy cooperative (Trébol/Co-op Chortitzer), Mennonite museums and German-language schools — as the only sustained settlements. Defensores del Chaco National Park (780,000 hectares) is one of South America's biggest jaguar reserves; visiting the Chaco requires a 4x4, an experienced guide, and best done May to September (dry season).

Paraguayan culture is unusually distinct on the continent. Tereré — cold mate served with medicinal yuyo herbs, drunk continuously through the hot day — is the country's social signature; UNESCO recognised tereré culture in 2020 as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The cuisine — sopa paraguaya (the national baked cornmeal-and-cheese cake, despite the name), chipa (the ring-shaped cheese-and-cassava-flour bread), mbeju, milanesa and asado — is reliable and inexpensive everywhere. Music carries the Guaraní heritage forward: the arpa paraguaya (the lyric Paraguayan harp, with the bell-like Pájaro Campana as standard repertoire), the polka paraguaya and the guarania ballad form invented by José Asunción Flores in 1925.