--- title: "Paraguay travel guide: the missions, the Chaco and when to go | Wimup" description: "Paraguay on Wimup: how the country splits either side of the river, which Jesuit missions are worth the drive, what the Chaco actually asks of you, the months that are bearable, and the food worth ordering." url: https://wimup.com/country/paraguay type: Country guide updated: 2026-10-05 publisher: Wimup (https://wimup.com) --- # Paraguay, two halves and one river Landlocked, bilingual in Spanish and **Guaraní**, and the country most South American itineraries skip. What is here is a set of ruined **Jesuit missions** in the south, the largest power station on the continent on the eastern border, and **the Chaco**, which is emptier than almost anywhere else on it. ## Quick answer Land at **Asunción** and give it two days for the waterfront, the Panteón and the market. Then the towns nearby: **Areguá** on Lake Ypacaraí for ceramics, **Caacupé** for the basilica. The set piece is the **Jesuit south**: Trinidad and Jesús de Tavarangüe, red sandstone missions about forty minutes from **Encarnación**. **Ciudad del Este** has the Itaipú dam and the bridge to Brazil and Iguazú. **The Chaco** needs its own three or four days. A week covers the east. Ten days adds the Chaco. ## Quick facts - **Best months:** Apr · May · Sep - **Ideal length:** 7–12 days - **Budget per day:** $40–90 - **Language:** Spanish & Guaraní - **Getting around:** Long-distance buses & a hired car - **6,460,159** People - **2** Official languages - **1537** Asunción founded Paraguay is two countries divided by one river, and the split decides everything about a trip. East of the Río Paraguay is where almost the whole population lives: rolling farmland, red earth roads, what is left of the Atlantic forest, and every city worth the name. West of it is the Chaco, a thorn scrub plain with one paved road through the middle and very little else. Asunción is the arrival point, founded in 1537 and used as the base from which much of the southern half of the continent was settled, which is why Paraguayans call it the mother of cities. Its centre is a compact grid of nineteenth-century government buildings above the bay, and the towns around it are the ones most visitors reach first: Areguá on Lake Ypacaraí with its ceramics and its cobbled hill, San Bernardino across the water, and Caacupé up in the Cordillera, whose basilica draws the country to it every December. South and east lie the Jesuit reductions. Trinidad and Jesús de Tavarangüe, listed together by UNESCO in 1993, are red sandstone missions abandoned after the order was expelled from Spanish territory in 1767, and they are the most substantial ruins in the country. Encarnación is the base for them, a river city facing Argentina that runs the biggest carnival in Paraguay through January and February. Further up the Paraná is Ciudad del Este, a border town built around the Itaipú dam and the Friendship Bridge to Brazil, with the Iguazú falls forty minutes away on the Brazilian side, which is how a lot of people arrive here without planning to. Concepción sits north on the river and Pilar holds the wetlands in the southwest. The Chaco is a decision of its own: Ruta 9 runs paved as far as Filadelfia, a Mennonite colony town planted in the thorn forest in 1930, and past it the surface ends and the wildlife starts. ## Know before you go - **Population:** 6,460,159 - **Area:** 406,752 km² - **Density:** 15.9 / km² - **Capital:** Asunción - **Major cities:** Asunción, Ciudad del Este, San Lorenzo, Luque, Capiatá - **Tourism board:** Official site - **Currency:** Guaraní (PYG, written Gs) Notes run into six figures. Cards work in Asunción, Encarnación and Ciudad del Este and thin out fast beyond. Carry cash for the missions, the Chaco and buses. Small-town ATMs are unreliable. - **Language:** Spanish and Guaraní Both are official, and Guaraní is what people speak at home: in 2024 more households used it, or both, than Spanish alone. Spanish carries any transaction. Mba'éichapa and aguyje warm it up. - **Calling code:** +595 - **Power:** 220V, socket type C - **Time zone:** UTC-3 all year Paraguay dropped the clock change in October 2024 and stays on UTC-3, the time of Buenos Aires and São Paulo. Older booking systems may still assume a March and October switch. - **Emergency:** 911 police, 132 fire, 141 ambulance The serious hospitals are in Asunción. Past Concepción or in the Chaco, the nearest capable one can be hours away, so buy insurance that names repatriation. - **Visa:** Visa free for 90 days for most Western passports US, Canadian, UK, Australian, New Zealand, EU and MERCOSUR citizens enter visa-free for up to 90 days. Paraguay has changed the list both ways, so check the immigration directorate's. - **Getting around:** Long-distance buses, and a car for the Chaco Buses are cheap, and the overnight runs between Asunción, Encarnación and Ciudad del Este are sleepable. Hire a car for the missions and the Chaco, and past Filadelfia plan your fuel. - **Tipping:** Round up, 10% in restaurants Ten per cent in a sit-down restaurant, often already on the bill as a service charge. Round up taxis. Nobody expects a tip on a bus or at a market stall. - **Safety:** Low risk in the south and east The tourist half is calm by regional standards. Concepción, Amambay and San Pedro in the northeast carry standing travel advice from several governments. Read yours before routing through them. - **Heat:** The planning constraint from November to March The heat catches people out. Eastern summers run well into the thirties with humidity, and the Chaco is hotter still. Sightsee early and late, and keep January afternoons for shade and tereré. - **Water:** Bottled outside the capital Tap water in Asunción is generally treated, but bottled is what almost everyone drinks and it is what to stick to once you leave the metropolitan area. - **Crossing to Brazil:** The Friendship Bridge at Ciudad del Este The Puente de la Amistad puts Foz do Iguaçu about forty minutes from Ciudad del Este. Get stamped on both sides, even for a day trip. Many skip it, and it bites when they leave the country. - **Yellow fever:** Certificate asked for by some neighbours Paraguay does not generally require a certificate, but Brazil and other onward countries may if you arrive from here. Vaccination is advised for the missions and the Chaco. Check your route. ## When to visit - **Jan** (peak): The hottest month, and the Encarnación carnival runs through it - **Feb** (peak): Still fierce, still humid, and the carnival's biggest weekends - **Mar** (good): The heat starts to let go late in the month - **Apr** (best): Warm days, cool nights and clear light on the missions - **May** (best): The pick of the year: dry, mild and quiet - **Jun** (good): Winter proper, mild by day with occasional cold snaps - **Jul** (good): The coolest month, and the driest in the Chaco - **Aug** (good): Dry, warming, and dusty out west - **Sep** (best): Spring, lapacho trees in flower, and comfortable everywhere - **Oct** (good): Warm and green, with spring thunderstorms building - **Nov**: The heat returns and the afternoons get heavy - **Dec** (peak): Hot, and the Caacupé pilgrimage fills the Cordillera on the 8th ## Fun fact Itaipú, the Paraná dam Paraguay owns half of, generated 103,098,366 megawatt hours in 2016, the most any power station had produced in a single year. Paraguay uses only a fraction of its half at home and sells most of the rest to Brazil at a price set by treaty. ## Stereotypes, sorted out - **Myth:** There is nothing to see in Paraguay. **Reality:** There is no single postcard. The Jesuit reductions at Trinidad and Jesús de Tavarangüe are the region's most complete mission ruins, listed by UNESCO in 1993. The Chaco holds jaguar, puma and the Chacoan peccary, known from fossils until found alive in the 1970s. What Paraguay lacks is a queue. - **Myth:** Guaraní is a heritage language kept going for the tourists. **Reality:** It is what the country speaks. Paraguay is the only country in the Americas where most non-indigenous people speak an indigenous language, co-official since 1992. In the 2024 survey more homes spoke Guaraní, or both, than Spanish alone. It is on the money, in parliament and in football commentary. - **Myth:** The Chaco is a desert. **Reality:** It is dry thorn forest that floods in the wet season, with one of South America's densest large-mammal populations and, in the west, some of the continent's hottest summers. It is being cleared for cattle faster than any forest of its kind. Going is an expedition, with the wildlife to yourself. - **Myth:** It is just a cheaper version of Argentina. **Reality:** Cheaper, yes. A version, no. Argentina reads European by design and Paraguay does not: the Guaraní inheritance is the culture, the food is cassava and corn, and the day runs on tereré. The two share a river and a bus timetable, little else. Come for Buenos Aires at a discount and leave disappointed. - **Myth:** The country is stuck in the Stroessner years. **Reality:** The dictatorship ended in 1989 and is history. Paraguay has held regular elections for over three decades and changed the governing party in 2008, and Asunción has glass towers on Avenida Aviadores del Chaco. What persists is concentrated land and an informal economy, which a visitor rarely meets. - Take the guampa when it comes round. Tereré is passed in one shared cup, you drink the whole serving and hand it back, and refusing without a reason reads as refusing the company. - Greet everyone in the room. A handshake or a kiss on both cheeks, individually, on arrival and again on leaving. Walking into a group with a general hello is the small rudeness visitors commit most often. - Use the Guaraní words you have. Mba'éichapa for how are you and aguyje for thank you cost nothing and are received warmly, and nobody expects a foreigner to have any of it. - Expect the day to be split. Business runs early, a long midday break follows in the heat, and things reopen late afternoon. Fighting that schedule in January is a losing argument with the weather. - Sunday is family and asado. Shops shut, the streets empty, and an invitation to somebody's yard on a Sunday afternoon is meant. - Do not confuse Paraguayan with Argentine or Brazilian. The country spent the nineteenth century being fought over by both and lost catastrophically to them in the War of the Triple Alliance. The national feeling on the subject runs deep. ## Famous Paraguayan faces - **Augusto Roa Bastos**: The great novelist. Yo el Supremo (1974) is a landmark, and he won the Cervantes in 1989. - **Agustín Barrios Mangoré**: Guitarist and composer who toured Latin America as Nitsuga Mangoré, in Guaraní dress. - **José Asunción Flores**: Created the guarania in 1925, the slow song form UNESCO listed in December 2024. - **José Luis Chilavert**: The goalkeeper who took free kicks and penalties, and scored 67 goals doing it. - **José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia**: El Supremo, who ruled from 1814 to 1840 and sealed the country off from its neighbours. - **Carlos Antonio López**: President from 1844 to 1862 who reopened the country, with a railway and an ironworks. - **Alfredo Stroessner**: Dictator from 1954 to 1989, the longest in twentieth-century South America. - **Fernando Lugo**: Former bishop who ended six decades of Colorado rule in 2008. Impeached in 2012. - **Gabriel Casaccia**: Father of modern Paraguayan literature. La Babosa (1952) looked hard at small-town life. - **Josefina Plá**: Spanish-born writer and ceramicist who shaped modern Paraguayan letters and Arte Nuevo. - **Elvio Romero**: Leading twentieth-century poet, who wrote from exile in Argentina for most of his life. - **Olga Blinder**: Painter, printmaker and teacher, the central figure of Paraguayan modernism. - **Carlos Colombino**: Inventor of xilopintura, and co-founder of the collection that became the Museo del Barro. - **Ricardo Migliorisi**: Painter and stage designer known for theatrical, saturated figuration. - **Berta Rojas**: Classical guitarist in the Barrios line. Latin Grammy for Legado in 2022. - **Luis Alberto del Paraná**: Leader of Los Paraguayos, who took the harp and guarania worldwide from the 1950s. - **Roque Santa Cruz**: Striker who left Olimpia for Bayern Munich at seventeen, later captain of Paraguay. - **Miguel Almirón**: Midfielder, MLS Cup winner with Atlanta United in 2018, then a record move to Newcastle. ## Must-try Paraguayan food - **Sopa paraguaya**: The national dish and not a soup: dense cornbread with cheese, onion, milk and eggs. - **Chipa**: Cassava-starch and cheese rings with aniseed, sold from baskets at every bus terminal. - **Asado**: Sunday itself. Beef over wood in somebody's yard, with the afternoon cleared around it. - **Mbejú**: Flat cassava-starch and cheese cake, crisped in a dry pan. Order it with cocido. - **Chipa guazú**: Fresh corn, cheese and eggs baked between pudding and cake. Served beside sopa paraguaya. - **Mandioca**: Boiled cassava, on the table at nearly every meal. Judge a kitchen on whether it is hot. - **Payagua mascada**: Fried patty of mashed cassava, minced beef and spring onion. Street and bar food. - **Vori vori**: Corn and cheese dumplings in chicken broth. Comfort food for the winter cold snaps. - **So'o yosopy**: Thin beef soup thickened with rice or vermicelli. Guaraní for meat, squeezed. - **Pira caldo**: River fish soup of surubí, milk and vegetables. The morning-after dish, and it earns it. - **Kiveve**: Andai squash cooked with corn flour and fresh cheese, sweet and savoury at once. - **Dulce de mamón**: Green papaya candied in syrup, served with a slab of fresh cheese. The classic dessert. - **Kaguyjy**: Also mazamorra. White corn slow-cooked with ash water and sweetened, eaten warm. - **Tereré**: Cold yerba mate with iced water and herbs, from a shared guampa. The national drink. - **Cocido**: Yerba mate scorched with sugar, steeped in boiling water and strained. Smoky and sweet. - **Mosto**: Fresh sugar cane juice pressed at a roadside stall. Best in the Guairá cane belt. ## FAQs ### Do you need a visa for Paraguay? Most Western travellers do not. Citizens of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union and the MERCOSUR countries enter visa free for stays of up to 90 days. Paraguay has changed this policy in both directions over the last decade, including reinstating visa-free entry for US citizens, so check the immigration directorate's current list for your nationality. You will want a passport with reasonable validity left and an onward ticket the airline can see. ### When is the best time to visit Paraguay? April, May and September. The country sits in the subtropics and the summer heat is the constraint: from November to March the east runs well into the thirties with humidity behind it, and the Chaco is worse. Winter, roughly June to August, is mild and dry and perfectly good, with the caveat of occasional cold snaps that push south off the plains. The shoulders on either side of it are the sweet spot. If the Encarnación carnival is the reason for the trip, that is January and February and you accept the heat as the price. ### How many days do you need in Paraguay? A week covers it properly if you stay east of the river: two days in Asunción, a day for the lake towns at Areguá and San Bernardino and the basilica at Caacupé, then three or four based in Encarnación for the Jesuit missions and the river. Ten to twelve days lets you add either the Chaco, which needs its own three or four days and a suitable vehicle, or the run north from Concepción. Paraguay also works well as the middle of a longer trip, since Iguazú sits at one end and Buenos Aires is an overnight bus from the other. ### Is Paraguay safe for travellers? The part of the country visitors actually use is calm by regional standards, and Asunción, the lake towns, the missions circuit and Encarnación ask for nothing more than the usual attention to a bag in a crowd. The real caveat is geographic: the northeastern departments of Concepción, Amambay and San Pedro carry standing advisories from several foreign ministries, and Ciudad del Este's commercial district is busy in a way that rewards keeping your valuables out of sight. Read your own government's current advice against your actual route. ### Do you need Spanish, or is Guaraní necessary? Spanish is enough for everything. Both languages are official and Guaraní is the language of daily life, spoken at home by more households than Spanish alone, but you will not find yourself stuck without it: transactions, signage, buses and hotels all run in Spanish. English is thin outside the capital's tourism trade, so some Spanish is close to essential. A few words of Guaraní is the single cheapest way to change the temperature of a conversation. ### Is Paraguay worth visiting on its own? It is worth visiting, and it is honest to say it usually goes with something else. There is no single sight here of the order of Machu Picchu or Iguazú, and the country does not pretend otherwise. What it has is the best-preserved Jesuit mission architecture in the region, a living indigenous language spoken by everyone, a wildlife frontier in the Chaco that almost nobody visits, and prices that are the lowest in the Southern Cone. Travellers who like a country that has not been arranged for them tend to leave surprised. ## Related countries - [Argentina](https://wimup.com/country/argentina.md) - [Colombia](https://wimup.com/country/colombia.md) - [All of South America](https://wimup.com/south-america) Part of [South America](https://wimup.com/south-america.md) ## Sources - [Tourism board](https://senatur.gov.py/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Visa](https://www.migraciones.gov.py/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - Rankings are Wimup editorial picks. Prices, durations and budgets are editorial estimates, not live quotes; check the official site before you go.