October 6, 2018
Spending a week in Asuncion eating meat and drinking beer and tereré. I also make my way to the waterfall Salto Cristal by local buses, hiking and hitch-hiking.
When travelling for this long you can’t see or do new things every day. You need rest days as well, preferably in nice, warm places with beer and a pool. I happened to find a really chill hostel in Asuncion that fulfilled those criteria and even though the city doesn’t have that many things to see I ended up staying for just over a week.
But the city does have some things to see. How about Asuncion’s very own Amsterdam sign with the presidential palace in the background? There was a huge military presence, apparently because of the election a month back, but they were surprisingly relaxed and I was allowed to take photos everywhere. You can even see a military jeep between some of the letters in the photo above.
I also wandered around in the neighbourhood Loma San Jerónimo, a small but colourful area. It was even smaller than I expected but still nice to stroll around in on a nice day.
The main thing in Asuncion is not really about sightseeing though. It’s all about eating and drinking. Paraguay produce a lot of beef and I’ve had a lot of meat to eat at all kinds of places from steakhouses to street vendors, generally of great quality and really tasty.
I also made my way to the microbrewery Sacramento Brewing where I had a tasting tray of the local beer. I’m usually not a fan of sour beer but they had one that was just perfect, and it tasted even better when I realised I was the first person ever to check in that beer on Untappd! Beer enthusiasts will know how rare that is.
The main drink in Paraguay is however, by far, tereré. Tereré is a kind of herbal tea that is drunk socially and in huge amounts. It’s similar to mate (also popular here and even more so in Argentina) but drunk cold instead. The concept is that you have a cup and a straw, the straw having a filter at the end to filter out the herbs, and fill the cup with the herb yerba mate. This is when it starts. From here on it’s basically a repeat of filling the cup with cold water, drinking all the water through the straw, and passing it to the next person. In one sense similar to how Swedes drink coffee (if you don’t know about Swedish fika, google it) but even more important to the locals and more social, especially the sharing part.
But there has to be more things to see, right? After a bit of googling I found out about Salto Cristal, a waterfall that seemed pretty cool, and even better, they have a camping there. Time to actually use the tent I’m carrying around all the time.
There’s only one catch. Paraguayan tourist infrastructure is not the best. The only reasonable way to get to the falls seemed to be by car, and renting a car for one person is a bit pricey. So I went for the unreasonable way instead. Taking a local bus to the town closest to the fall, La Colmena (4 hours and ~€3), and then hike the remaining 20km, and then the same thing back. Quite an adventure!
I didn’t actually have to hike all the way though. Countryside Paraguay is great for hitch-hiking and in the end I probably only walked about 20km in total instead of 20km each way. I even went through that film-like moment when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, stick your thumb up for a passing pickup truck, it stops, and you throw your backpack and yourself up on the bed of the truck and enjoy the journey from there.
The fall is pretty spectacular and I even got it, including the camping, to myself all the time. Not too much of a surprise considering how off the location is, but it still makes the effort of getting there a bit extra worth it.
A few notes for other travellers going for the falls: a big part of the traffic in the area are motorbikes so it might be harder to hitch a ride if you’re not travelling alone. Also the prices for the falls are very unclear. An old photo on google said 10 000 + 10 000 Guarani for entrance + camping. The sign when I got there said 20 000 + 50 000 Guarani for one adult. But when I paid they asked for a total of 30 000 (~€4.5). If you decide to go by car it’s probably good to get a 4x4 as the state of the road varies quite a bit, asphalt, cobble, mud, and sand. And there are lots of mosquitoes there…
One week passes pretty quickly though, and tomorrow it’s time to leave Asuncion and head to my last stop in Paraguay, Encarnacion.