Asunción, the capital of Paraguay

My recent South American travels started in Buenos Aires, crossed the River Plate to Colonia in Uruguay, continued to Fray Bentos, the capital Montevideo and then along the Uruguay beach strip to Punta del Este and José Ignacio before continuing to Asunción the capital of Paraguay

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▲ Pantheon of Heroes, Plaza de los Heroes – naturally I started my explorations at the capital’s heroic centre, Fides et Patria – Faith and Homeland – it proclaims across the front of the burial place for assorted Paraguayan heroes including Don Carlos Antonio López (first president), Mariscal Francisco Solano López, Mariscal José Félix Estigarribia (hero and winner of the Chaco War against Bolivia) and his wife. There are regular changing of the guards at the front of this central city location.

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▲ Catedral Metropolitana, Plaza Constitucion – also looks impressive, but I really liked the Museo Juan Sinforiano Bogarin (ex Siminario Coniliar) beside the cathedral which has a lot of wonderfully amateurish looking old religious art. Also overlooking the adjacent Plaza de Armas is the pink Cabildo …

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◄  Policia Nacional, Antidisturbios … and nearby I encountered a war-like armoured police van, like something from Belfast in the bad days. There are so many policia nacional scattered around the city centre when in fact there was so little other activity to note. They seem quite happy for me to photograph their ‘antidisturbios’ vehicle.

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▲ empty weekend streets – in fact there was remarkably little going on anywhere I went in the city centre. If you were looking for a place to park your car you’d have no trouble finding a vacant spot in downtown Asunción, I put it down to it being the weekend. I arrived on a Friday, left on a Monday and the city centre seemed remarkably quiet the whole time. It wasn’t only the centre which was quiet, I flew to Asunción from Montevideo and although there weren’t many flights arriving and departing the Uruguayan capital my Paranair flight was absolutely the only aircraft arriving at the Aeropuerto Internacional Silvio Pettirossi and I had to hustle around to find a taxi driver.

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▲  murals & graffiti around Calle Estrella & City Centre – colourful wall paintings around the centre brighten things up a bit.

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▲ More murals

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▲ But the unused train station & railway museum, the Estacion Ferrocarril, was my Asunción favourite, there are no trains operating in Paraguay any longer although there are some interesting looking old locomotives abandoned near the old station. Assorted other places around the city were closed for the weekend, so I never got to see the Museo de las Memorias about the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship. He ruled the country for 35 years with appalling violence and cruelty until he was finally overthrown in 1989 and fled to Brazil. The bad-news red Chevy truck still stands in the museum driveway, if it pulled up outside your home you were in big trouble.

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I didn’t see the suburban Museo del Barro either, it was closed on Sunday. When I arrived at the Casa de la Independencia it was also closed. That seemed to be the story of Asunción for me although I dropped in to the Centro Cultural Manzana de la Rivera and admired the Palacio Lopez from the outside. Never mind the classic Asunción lunch counter, Confiteria Bolsi always seemed to be doing good business and when everything else seemed to be closed on Sunday afternoon I retreated there for a cold beer. Meanwhile the endless football plays on the café TVs. The whole time I’ve been in South America it’s never been off the screen. While I’m sipping my beer I read up on Eliza Lynch. Perhaps she was an Irish Eva Peron, whatever she was much maligned and I’d just walked past her Asunción house.

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▲ El Café de Acá at Villa Morra – not only were the streets empty of cars, they were also empty of taxis. Fortunately I found one waiting in the Plaza de los Heroes and took it out to the suburbs where this stylish – and remarkably crowded – café would have absolutely fitted in in London, Melbourne, New York, wherever. Design, decor, clientele, everything. In fact the menu would probably leave most places in the shade, it’s that long. I had a pita-felafel wrap followed by a café con leche. This was a much more stylish area than the city centre, there was even a Taylor Swift shop and later I saw a Porsche dealer (I’d not seen a single Porsche) and the site for a Maserati dealer. But how do I travel the five km back to the city? I could hope for a taxi or hail a bus or just start walking, but almost immediately a taxi appeared, only the second one I’d seen that day. .

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▲ Dance festival in the Plaza Uruguaya – fortunately it wasn’t totally quiet in Asunción, this gathering featured plenty of stomping gauchos and swirling skirts performing for an appreciative audience.

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▲ On Monday the crowds suddenly reappeared and from the traffic jams heading in to the city I was glad I was heading in the opposite direction, to the Terminal de Omnibus from where I took a bus to the Brazilian border, where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet near the Iguazu Falls.