Encarnación

Night bus about 5 hours to Posadas, then found a bus across the border to Encarnacion, Paraguay. Everything went smoothly except the bus forgot me at the border in Paraguay so then I had to walk a couple of kilometres to my hostel. 😂
Walked around the town a bit to find food and cash. Quite a nice place actually, with people chilling in the main square and selling cold Mate, which is the Paraguayan specialty. Didn’t know what to expect really because Paraguay gets very few tourists and is known as very poor, corrupt and relatively dangerous compared to most of South America. But in this tiny taste, I liked it a lot and had good vibes.
Took a local bus about an hour to the village of Trinidad. Here there are the ruins of a Jesuit Mission, built in the late 1600s. Quite a strange bit of history that I didn’t know anything about before. Some Jesuits arrived in this area of Brazil/Argentina/Paraguay in the 1600s and somehow convinced a lot of the native Guarani people to follow them and build huge communities with stone churches and buildings etc. This one had 4000 people! Also Converted them of course, but built pretty impressive settlements. Then the Jesuits got kicked out of South America by the spanish and the communities kind of just fell apart and the Guarani left. Weird/cool! There’s still a lot of indigenous in Paraguay and the language is widely spoken apparently. Took a cab to check out the other ruin Jesus de Tarangay (?) 10km away, with an impressive well-preserved church. Then bus back and evening walking in the town and along the lakefront. Korean food from very grumpy owners. A day in Paraguay!Leggi altro