Encarnacion, Paraguay

Encarnacion was always my planned destination in Paraguay (I ended up in Asuncion just because that was the closest airport). The town is best known as the gateway to nearby Jesuit ruins, about forty minutes outside of town.

 

Trinidad was established as a Jesuit mission on 1706. Father Juan de Anaya first settled here with just over six hundred families and the mission grew to more than three thousand inhabitants over time.

 

The church was built entirely of stone in typical European baroque style. The massive building was rich with ornate decorations that had held up relatively well over the last three hundred years. I especially loved the enormous bricks.

 

There were plenty of small statues and other relics to investigate.

 

The Jesuits were expelled from the region in 1768 and the indigenous population returned to their own traditional lifestyle. The buildings then fell into disrepair after years of neglect. Excavations began in the early 1970s and by 1993, the ruins were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

 

We took a mototaxi to see another set of ruins not too far away.

 

This was a smaller group of ruins, but no less impressive.

 

One of the great things about Paraguay is that there are so few tourists in the country, that you can have incredible historic sites like this pretty much all to yourself.

 

Asuncion, Paraguay

A couple of years ago, I thought about going to Paraguay for a week's vacation from school. A friend's sister had served there for Peace Corps, so I emailed him to ask her for tips. I have always found that PC volunteers have great pride in where they served and are always eager to share their country with other travelers. The response came back: have you thought about going to Brazil instead?

Not surprisingly, there's not really a whole lot to do in Asuncion and we didn't do any guided tours to learn more about the it's history, so this is kind of a short post.

 

A convenient way to carry your bread for sale.

 

The city's central plaza was undergoing renovations.

 

Some of the architecture was traditionally European in the day...

 

...and then Vegas neon at night.

 

We think this was the presidential residence. For sure, the guards will aggressively blow their whistles at you if they see you taking photos.

 

There was a lot of artistic and political graffiti throughout the city.

 

Asuncion was a city we could never figure out. How safe is it here? Where are the restaurants? Where are the people? Why are there so many little children out at 10pm on a Monday? Our favorite activity was watching the prostitutes and guessing man-or-woman. Or, as we called them, prosti-dudes. This is how I spent my time in Paraguay's capital.