Paraguay isn’t the easiest country to travel to for people without a car. Unlike many other places, there are no big tour companies with daily departures to the country’s tourist sites. It’s probably due to the lack of tourists. When I said I’d decided to visit Paraguay, I was mostly asked why. And that was exactly the reason. What is Paraguay all about? How are things over there? Curiosity. Why not?
I’d read about the great natural attractions of Paraguay, but couldn’t visit them unless I put down way too much money for a private tour or car rental. So my Paraguay travel buddy Türkan and I decided to follow the advice of one of the guys working at the hostel: visit Yaguarón. In theory it was easy enough. We ubered to the main bus station and found the local buses going into the region around Asuncion. People were looking at us as if we were lost. The local buses are simple. No fancy seats. Just a lot of color and loud music blasting over the speakers. Also, they are dirt cheap! We waited for a while as more people boarded the bus and then slowly made our way out of the city. Boy, it was slow! The traffic going out of the city was crazy and although we only had 45km to cover, we sat on the bus for nearly 3 hours.
When we finally got off the bus we headed for a few points I’d marked on my map after some quick research online. We walked via a quiet pedestrian area with benches. There were golden statues of teachers, writers, singers and other artists, representing the culture of Paraguay. Around the corner was San Buenaventura church, a historic landmark that has been recognised as such by Unesco since a few years. Unfortunately its doors were closed, but we had a look around the outside. Google maps had shown another interesting point. It showed beautiful woodwork that seemed like part of an altar. So I fully expected to find a chapel of some sort. But we walked out of the city center and into a street with regular houses. On the map it looked like the spot was somewhere in between the houses, but there was no official path. We found a family sitting outside and asked them. They looked at us in confusion, but one of them decided to show us to the site. To my surprise it was an overgrown path that lead to a small square with an old well. People had made some benches decorated with bottle lids, but there was also a lot of trash. Someone had posted the gorgeous altar photos on the wrong spot on google maps.
We thanked our local guide and went on our way towards the Yaguarón hill. We hoped to find some food on the way, because our bellies were starting to complain, but the streets were quiet and we didn’t see any restaurants. One family was out in their yard and as we stood to watch their animals, they came out to show us all the bunnies and dog. Then we reached the bottom of the famous hill. Well… famous with locals, because it’s also a religious site. Religious or not, we did have to pay an entry fee. We were promised there was a restaurant with food at the top. So we climbed up the hard way, at times using hands and feet to get up the rocks, past the stations of the cross. But it is also the birthplace of Guaraní mythology. This explains why we saw dragons and other mythical figures at the base of the hill. It’s interesting how different believes combine. On the hill we found a spot with the “footprints of Saint Thomas”. If you step on that spot and make a wish in good faith, your wish will come true. I tried, but I’m not a worthy believer.
Beside being an interesting cultural experience, the Yaguarón hill was also just a beauty. We could see quite far, despite the clouds and occasional light rain. There was a sort of plateau where we could look at the surroundings from different angles. On it we found a cross, a little chapel, a place for pilgrims to leave their rosaries and also many black vultures. It really was an interesting culture clash. We’d just missed the holy week by a couple of weeks. Although we were now sharing the hill with a couple and a small family, it’s a bustling place during holy week, since thousands of religious people come to climb the hill. We were really keen to get some food, so eagerly walked to the café. We found out they didn’t really have that much. It was more a place to buy some snacks, so we shared some crisps and had a drink.
We left the plateau the easy way. There was a sort of road leading past fields and a bunch of houses until we were back at the start of the stations of the cross. We walked back to the center a different way, on what turned out to be the paseo de los mitos. The road was decorated and showed painted signs with the mythological monsters of Guaraní culture. There were QR-codes you could scan to learn more about them. It was late in the afternoon and we had no idea when the last bus would go. The locals ensured us there should still be a bus, although they didn’t quite know when it would come.
We ended up returning to a main road where all the buses seemed to pass. At the police station they confirmed the bus should pass there and a kind cop stuck out his head occasionally to check on us. It took a while, but we were picked up by the same driver who had dropped us off. He smiled and said “do you remember me?”. We were relieved there was still a bus, but also disappointed to see, when we drove by on the bus, that the highlight of the town, the famous church, had opened its doors in the afternoon. We could still only imagine what it looked like inside. It took another three hours to return to the city and we were absolutely starving when we arrived. We quickly hopped in an uber to the modern part of town to devour some burgers before going back to the hostel. It had been an unexpected, interesting day.
