Paraguay: an unexpectedly holy roadtrip
On religion, beetroot juice, and not quite making it to the Pantanal.
It’s about time I reported back on Paraguay, a country of great reward and great frustration. Given its lesser popularity for international tourism, we knew it would be a more difficult place to navigate than the more tourist-centric sights of Bolivia and Peru. Add to that the uncertainty brought about by the ongoing Pantanal wildfires, the extremes in weather (when will it rain?! And when it starts, will it ever stop?!) and the real lack of tourist information about the many nature reserves and other places of interest, I can concede that to know Paraguay well requires a lot of time and patience.
Dave and I absolutely loved Asunción, Paraguay’s understatedly cool capital – full of very fun and grungy bars and restaurants – but we were determined to see some nature by visiting the Paraguayan Pantanal. There is a research station with accompanying lodge which supposedly hosts guests, but after two weeks of hugely frustrating email conversations with the organisers (“we can only take bookings in October” … “but it is October!”) we found ourselves stumped.
There was also the question of transport getting up there: a bus to the Paraguay River (which makes up the country’s northern border) and a boat from there to Bahía Negra, a stepping-off point for the jungle, sounded fun – but then we learned that the boat is out of action for the foreseeable. A 17-hour bus will allegedly take you there from Asunción, but only once a week, and then you’ll need a private car to get you the last bit of the way to the lodge. A more exciting option we came across was the possibility of hitching a ride on a military plane – the SETAM makes a trip once a week stopping at every hamlet along the way to drop off medical supplies and other packages, and it will take human passengers too, space permitting. Dave was in contact with Sargento Navarro over Whatsapp and we considered the 4am start, departing on my birthday morning, quite seriously, until we learned that to stay at the research lodge we would need to bring all our own supplies of food – the military plane would charge extra for the weight and baggage – oh, and there was no fridge and the river had dried up anyway so there was no possibility of tours. We put the idea on hold.
In between all of this correspondence, we took a trip out west to the Chaco. The Gran Chaco is a vast, semi-arid region covering parts of Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina. No, I hadn’t heard of it either before this year, but the name is said to be from the Quechua word chaqu, meaning "hunting land" – indicative of the rich variety of wildlife native to the area. Our visit took place towards the end of the Chaco winter (June-October) which meant that while it was still unbearably hot – reaching 42 degrees celcius some days – the place was bone dry, with a fierce hot wind that made standing out in the street feel like being chased by a giant hair dryer. We were told that the temperature can and has reached 50+, the only difference in summer (December-March) being that there are frequent downpours.
The other curious thing about the Paraguayan Chaco is that this huge area is mostly private farmland, and so the easiest way to access it is by staying with the Mennonite families who live there. I touched on this a couple of weeks ago, but Mennonites are Anabaptist Christians who came to the South American continent after fleeing first the Netherlands, then Prussia, then eventually Russia in the 1920s and 30s to avoid conscription and discrimination for their pacifist conservative beliefs. Some groups ended up in North America, but a fair few came to Paraguay because, reading between the lines, the Paraguayan government was more than happy to sell indigenous peoples’ land to comparatively wealthy Europeans in order for them to farm it.
Mennonites speak Plautdietsch, a Low German language from the 16th century, which is a complete culture shock to see and hear in the middle of Spanish-speaking Latin America. In Paraguay and around the world, the most conservative congregations live and farm in the same way they have done for centuries – ie, without electricity or modern technology – and wear quite distinctive, traditional plain dress. Others tend to still wear plain dress and keep to their own communities, but they don’t shun modern conveniences. In western Paraguay, there are also plenty of Mennonite families who wear contemporary clothing, live in a modern way and are open to marrying outside of their own congregations.
Our host in Filadelfia, Marilyn, was from one such community: she wore band t-shirts, had electric blue hair, and spoke to us in excellent English about the months she’d spent backpacking around Europe when she was younger, lamenting that she’d always hoped to travel again but then she “got married young and immediately had five children” – as is so often the Menno way.
Marilyn inherited her farm from her grandparents, who arrived in Paraguay in the 1920s and built the place from scratch, starting by digging down to find water and making a well around which to construct the house. The family still use the same water supply for washing, cooking and cleaning, and we watched Marilyn and some of her Workaway volunteers* opening the same well and cleaning it out ready to catch the first rain when it hopefully landed sometime that month.
(* Dave and I stayed and volunteered on Fede’s farm in Uruguay through Workaway and I’d definitely do something like that again – but not in Paraguay, bloody hell, I’d die doing manual labour in those temperatures, even if it was just feeding kittens.)
The farm still has goats, sheep and a few cows and horses, but these days Marilyn runs it mostly as a nature reserve and visitor site for families, hosting guests like us in the many spare bedrooms of the farmhouse and campers in a designated site nearby. It was the nature aspect that appealed to us to stay there, though it took me a bit of time to settle into our surroundings upon arrival – the heat, the heavy, meat-centric meals, and the difference in culture that made social interactions awkward, even if Marilyn was perfectly friendly herself.
Dave and I spent our afternoons playing crazy golf (I thrashed him), swimming in the family pool (defending our chairs and towels against enormous young Mennonite families with zero spacial awareness) and reading in hammocks, waiting for the heat to subside enough for walking the farm’s perimeter. As the sun started to descend, we’d spend a couple of hours exploring the various patches of dry forest and almost dry watering holes looking for creatures – which in the heat of the day were mostly birds, including a resident rhea, butterflies and slightly frazzled-looking sheep.
We’d asked Marilyn if it was safe to walk at night, whether we could go it alone or if we needed to take a guide, and she was incredibly laidback about it and told us of course, nighttime was the best time to go. “Go out to the watering hole towards the eastern side, she said, “make sure you take a torch and spend a couple of hours.” And so on our final night, we did just that.
With no light pollution or any other humans around for miles, the path was spooky but fruitful: we saw tarantulas bigger than my hand, a couple of very busy armadillos, and hordes and hordes of insects who were naturally very attracted to my torch. We took a lap around one of the watering holes, feeling very brave but still managing to freak ourselves out for the feeling of there being Things Out There Watching Us whom we couldn’t see. This feeling was only reinforced by the sight of several dead cow bones caught in a fence that we definitely hadn’t noticed in the day time. In any case, the insects were starting to irritate me – enormous beetles flying into my face and getting lost in my hair – and so we decided to start heading back for bed.
Just at that moment, we heard a sound so loud, so deep and so distinctive – that felt so very close to us – that we both froze and my heart leapt into my mouth… because I knew – despite Dave’s optimistic whisper that “it could just be a very weird sort of distressed cow?” – that it could only be a puma. To give Dave credit, he was very up for following the puma sound into the bush, but I was absolutely not and so we hot-footed back to the house.
The following morning over our daily beetroot juice and cod-liver oil* pancakes (*ok “honey” apparently, but it was sour), I caught Marilyn and relayed the night’s events. After my impressive reenactment of the roar, she actually gasped as she confirmed it was a puma (“Oh you're very lucky! Did you see them?!”). Apparently there are six of them living in the area around the farm and they come to Marilyn's watering holes to mate, something she definitely failed to mention before we set off out there.
I loved our nature walks and the slower pace of life on the farm. But it was also sometimes strange. There was the beetroot juice with every meal, for starters. And although I knew from spying into the kitchen that the cook had beers we could buy, the family clearly didn't drink and the offer of beer was not forthcoming. We felt like naughty school children whenever we asked for them, which resulted in us sharing a grand total of only five small ones over the course of three nights, which I thought was quite pious.
While Latin Americans are generally warm, effusive, curious and chatty, Mennonites are somewhat reserved. For most of our mealtimes, Dave and I were served separately from the family by a very frosty-faced cook, but one evening the family sat down at the same table as us to share a curry, which seemed nice. Dave and I were still served our food separately – it arrived already plated up and put in front of us – and it was only after the two of us had eaten half a dozen forkfuls that we realised our error: the family had paused before serving themselves from their communal platter to say grace, and we felt like insensitive idiots. I tried to make conversation with the extended family beyond Marilyn but the other members (including her husband who sat next to me silently, not eating) weren't very receptive.
It was a similar story when a large Mennonite family arrived for the day on Sunday to enjoy the pool and facilities: I was determined to make eye contact to say hello, but they managed to avoid it and clearly didn’t want to engage. It also presented a bit of a social dilemma when I realised all the girls in the family were wearing modesty tops to swim in (while I sat in a regular, not particularly modest bikini). And then there was the beetroot juice… with every meal.
Still, it was fascinating to talk to Marilyn in the rare moments when she wasn't super busy. And once I relaxed into the place I felt incredibly at peace. The Paraguayan Chaco is really special, and it's admirable that people like Marilyn are doing their best to protect it. The Gran Chaco has one of the highest rates of deforestation on the planet – which is largely down to the emphasis on farming in these parts by Mennonites. Shifting ranches like Marilyn’s towards tourism and allowing space for wildlife to thrive definitely feels like a positive step forward for a region that has already been overfarmed and where biodiversity is under threat.
We’d arrived in Filadelfia two nights previously and stayed in one of the town’s two hotels so as to give ourselves a full day to really soak up the sights. As it turns out, one afternoon is plenty long enough, and the entire town closes for several hours over lunch anyway (including restaurants, regrettably) but we had an interesting time visiting Filadelfia’s full cluster of museums dedicated to Mennonite life, and met two very sweet and earnest young male Mennos who were eager to share their history alongside just a little dose of propaganda.
And speaking of propaganda. The town was very much lacking in restaurants or nightlife, but the nicest and also the most intense meal Dave and I enjoyed in Filadelfia was at a very unexpected Greek restaurant run by the self-professed “only genuine Greek in Paraguay”. He was as intrigued by us as we were of him – just how does a man from the Greek archipelago end up in a landlocked South American country? – and was very keen to chat and bitch a little about how the Mennonites “don't know how to enjoy food”.
So how and why did he end up in Paraguay’s Mennonite heartland? “Too many muslims, too many immigrants, too many homosexuals and now the other ones” impacting the “European culture” and “polluting the minds” of young people, apparently (I’m guessing he’s not one for Eurovision). He and his German wife are “not religious” but God did apparently tell them to move to Paraguay and study the bible in ancient Greek together in Filadelfia with their two daughters. Later, after he’d explained all this and any other customers were long gone, he took us to the back of the restaurant to show us his collection of swords, guns and suits of armour, which he brought over from his German castle a few years ago. I'm going to put it out there: I told him my pasta was great because I’m a coward, but it was actually very mediocre.
A stopover back in Asunción gave us the chance to visit a couple of museums, namely the Museo de las Memorias, a fairly disturbing monument to the Stroessner dictatorship. The museum is housed in one of the detention centres from that time, and includes a (presumably) fake body tied up and wrapped in a sheet on the floor of one of the cells with very little explanation. It has a couple of other interesting artefacts but very little historic information overall, and none of it in English – which I do understand, and is quite normal for lots of museums in Latin America, but it feels like a missed opportunity to educate international tourists about something a lot of us know next to nothing about.
The place was a complete contrast to the excellently-done Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, which has a huge interactive collection, including videos with English translations, and a very powerful triple-height wall with images of all of the disappeared on it. Clearly, the Chilean museum also has a lot more funding going into it – the Asunción counterpart appeared to be run by volunteers who were clearly not used to getting many visitors.
After some birthday indulgence staying at the Villa Floreal, we were thirsting for more religious sect action and took a bus south-west, this time towards Encarnacion, Paraguay’s third-largest city, which made a good base for exploring the nearby Jesuit Mission ruins.
Jesuit missionary settlements were built in Paraguay and neighbouring countries in the early 1700s. Here they most often consisted of a stone chapel with surrounding buildings to serve as a self-sufficient town. Missionaries taught theology and generally worked to convert the local indigenous populations, but supposedly the lifestyle was good and the Jesuits tended to be a lot kinder than the Spanish. The sites are now in various states of ruin, which makes them very atmospheric, surrounded by lush greenery, and they are impressive nonetheless. We spent two nights in San Cosme y Damián and one night in Trinidad, with a day trip to Jesús de Tavarangüe on our way back to the city.
Trinidad is known for being the best preserved and therefore most impressive of the sites – it has the biggest stone temple among all the Jesuit Missions, an enormous city of a cathedral, with an altar carved from a single piece of stone. Frankly, the site managers of all these places had a far too relaxed attitude towards visitors like us arriving at dusk to to traipse all over the place unrestrained and creep down into the definitely haunted crypt. But I liked San Cosme for its great little planetarium and museum dedicated to the Jesuits’ early knowledge of space. Our guide explained the night sky as the 17th century Jesuit stargazers would have seen it, and he also had some very cool telescopes through which we could view Saturn's rings.
The towns themselves were all tiny, and quite off the beaten track (they certainly weren't used to having foreign tourists). One night in San Cosme, Dave and I spectacularly misjudged just how open and plentiful the shops and restaurants might be, and we ended up sharing the remainder of my birthday cake and a single plum for our dinner. But it was a magical place and nice to see another side of Paraguay’s mysterious personality.
The other thing that happened in San Cosme was that I booked a very last minute flight back to London to see a friend get married… and so the remainder of our time in Paraguay quickly became a more structured and time-constrained affair. However, on our way out of the country making our way towards the Brazilian border, we enjoyed a few days at the very charming Mbaracayú Lodge in Ygatimi – a hidden gem in the true sense of the phrase because like many good things in Paraguay, this place certainly wasn't in the guidebook and we stumbled upon it by chance/lots of Googling. But what a beautiful and tranquil place to spend our remaining time in Paraguay before the mad scramble east to Brazil, São Paulo International airport and beyond. But more about that part next time, I think.
Travel bits and tips from this week
To see the Chaco we took a bus out to Filadelfia, which is just about the only major town in the region and a functional jumping-off point for more rural stays.
There are two hotels in Filadelfia: the Hotel Florida looked great but that was full, so we stayed at the Hotel Golondrina which was about as alluring as its name.
In Filadelfia we managed to find some lunch at the town’s supermarket buffet, and then went for a very intense meal at El Griego i. Even now that I know the owner has some awful views of the world, it would be pretty hard to encourage a boycott given that it is just about the only proper restaurant in Filadelfia.
Luckily, the following day we were picked up by Marilyn and taken to Hotel Campestre Iparoma, where we were fed and watered for three days and three nights.
Back in Asunción, we stayed one night at Nomada Hostel, an absolutely cracking little place with friendly vibes (but not too friendly, like forced-fun-around-the-beer-pong-table friendly, just relaxed).
We ate at Bolsi and returned to Cafe Consulado, and had a decent Thai meal at Sawasdee (flip the menu over and it also offers Indian, which is confusing).
We visited the Museo de las Memorias and the Museo de Bellas Artes, which was absolutely fine.
We moved on to the Villa Floreal Hotel for ultimate birthday indulgence. After a brilliant breakfast there, we went for a second birthday breakfast at Cafe de Aca (which I wish I could go back to) and then later headed to Dorsia cocktail bar and to Tierra Colorada Gastro for a delicious and fancy dinner.
In Encarnacion, we ended up returning to a German restaurant called Hexenkessel multiple times for lunch (great salads, big jacket potatoes and other things we don’t usually see in these parts) and to the Selva Negra Kaffee Haus, another German café for our caffeine and lemonade.
There weren’t hundreds of options for dinner near our hotel, but we had a great time at the intimidatingly huge and popular Hiroshima.
In San Cosme we stayed in a cute little cabin run by Montesur cabanas y camping; in Trinidad we stayed a Posada Maria, run by a terrifyingly serious German-speaking woman.
It was a long day from Encarnacion to Ygatimi, taking two buses across half the country. Arriving late in the evening, we checked into the Hotel San Andres which was up there with the most bleak places we’ve stayed. The room was so dirty I effectively bullied a small child working on the reception desk into cleaning it for us. Dinner was a burger, because that was the only thing on the menu. We were the only people in the restaurant. I feel personally insulted that this place has managed to bribe its way to a 4.9 Google rating.
Finally, we stayed for three nights at the Mbaracayú Lodge, which is in a national reserve towards the north-eastern border. We didn’t know what to expect there, but the rooms were lovely and the food also very good on account of the hospitality training college attached to the lodge. We spent our days going on very gentle walks on the surrounding trails and watching for monkeys and parrots. I’d highly recommend it.