36 Hours
36 Hours in Asunción, Paraguay
Paraguay’s hot, humid capital doesn’t top many bucket lists. It lacks Rio de Janeiro’s spectacular setting and Buenos Aires’s cultural heft. Corruption and the legacy of dictatorship have kept it in a time warp of cobbled streets, moldering mansions and the odd horse-and-cart. Now, the good news: For the adventurous traveler, Asunción’s off-the-radar quality is its strongest asset. Tourists are met with a friendly curiosity they are unlikely to find in other South American capitals. A renaissance in how the city is embracing its heritage is palpable: Restaurants are defining the New Paraguayan cuisine, a stylish showroom is putting Indigenous folk art on the map and new tours are unlocking ornate palaces and hardscrabble neighborhoods alike. Spend a weekend in this slow-paced, overlooked city before taking the new bridge, inaugurated this month, to the Chaco forest: one of the world's last great wildernesses, but quickly disappearing.
Recommendations
- Calle Palma is a downtown street of historic residences with striking fin de siècle façades.
- Óga, meaning “home” in the Indigenous Guaraní language, is a restaurant pioneering a novel Paraguayan cuisine that pays homage to the country’s gastronomic traditions.
- ChacaTours takes visitors down the winding staircases and colorful alleyways of the much-misunderstood Chacarita neighborhood.
- POpore is a new gallery that spotlights Paraguay’s vibrant Indigenous and popular art.
- La Estación Central del Ferrocarril, a museum in a charming old train station, offers a journey in time to when Paraguay had a national rail network.
- El Panteón Nacional de los Héroes, an opulent chapel, is the resting place of leaders both revered and reviled.
- El Palacio de López, the government palace, is taking visitors for the first time in years.
- El Jardín Botánico is a sprawling, forested park patrolled by monkeys and caimans.
- La Costanera is a riverside promenade and a great place to people-watch.
- La Chispa, a pop-up cultural space, lights up a dilapidated block with live music and strident political theater on weekends.
- Contacto Café Social Club serves iced concoctions of blood-orange syrup, tonic and espresso in a small-but-friendly coffee shop.
- Garage Sónico, a relaxed cocktail club in the owners’ home, plays bossa nova while you sip highballs made with native fruit infusions.
- Café Consulado does tasty lunches and sandwiches in a hip downtown location.
- Karu, a cafe with a verdant patio, tops brownies with swirls of passionfruit mousse in the trendy Las Mercedes neighborhood.
- Casa Clari, a cafe-bar in a colonial building, lets you peer into the presidential palace across the street.
- Pakuri, a restaurant built from upcycled shipping containers, does Paraguayan dishes with a Peruvian twist, pairing them with fine Argentine wines.
- Club Condesa pumps out electronica for the in-crowd until well past sunrise and has an in-house music store, Pampanam, selling rare vinyls of Brazilian samba alongside records by up-and-coming Paraguayan artists.
- Bolsi, a restaurant in the city center, doles out empanadas and other parcels of fried goodness to the peckish and hungover.
- Don Oscar provides no-frills barbecue and bright-orange hot sauce in repurposed Pepsi bottles.
- Negroni Rooftop serves cocktails and sushi from a privileged perch among the shopping malls and skyscrapers of the new Asunción.
- Shopping del Pescado, a cheap and cheerful family restaurant, grills fresh fish on a concrete boardwalk above the river.
- La Red Agroecológica y Artesanal is a Saturday market with stalls selling handicrafts and organic foodstuffs.
- El Paseo Artesanal is a good place to buy souvenirs like hammocks and ponchos.
- El Mercadito is a market with fresh vegetables, herbal remedies and vendors selling a restorative chicken soup called vori vori.
- Palmaroga Hotel, which opened in 2019, has 107 rooms soaring above a restored atrium. The terrace offers panoramic views, and the adjoining restaurant, La María Cocina y Carbón, serves prime Paraguayan steak. Rooms start at 520,000 guaraníes, or about $71.
- Gran Hotel del Paraguay boasts colonnaded courtyards filled with banana, calabash and palm trees, a chandelier-lit ballroom with frescoes creeping up the warped wooden ceilings and a generous-size pool frequented by miniature emerald hummingbirds. Rooms start at 350,000 guaraníes.
- Nómada is a hostel close to the main sights and cheap lunch options. Shared dorms (from 80,000 guaraníes per bunk) face a convivial dining area and garden with hammocks. It only takes cash.
- Short-term rentals are plentiful and relatively cheap. Most cluster near the Villa Morra district, close to high-end stores and nightlife. Apartments with sweeping views of the river can be found in the old center, where it’s safest to use Ubers after dark.
- Ride-hailing apps like Uber, Bolt and a homegrown version called MUV are the best options to get around Asunción. Battered yellow taxis run on meters and can be found near the Panteón and outside shopping malls. To ride the buses, gaudily decorated with saints and tassels, buy a rechargeable Jaha card from a supermarket or pharmacy (2,300 to 3,400 guaraníes per journey). Yank the cord to get off. Walking is a good way to enjoy the historic center, but bring water, a hat and sunscreen during summer (December to February).
Itinerary
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