Villarrica, Paraguay – Not a Traditional Paraguayan Destination
On paper, Villarrica, Paraguay doesn’t have much to offer tourism-wise. A city of about 50,000, it sits about a half an hour south of Ruta 1, the main highway connecting Asunción with Ciudad del Este on Paraguay’s triple border with Brazil and Argentina. Villarrica, like Paraguay on the whole, does not have any marquis attractions per se, but rather is an authentic Paraguayan town where it’s possible to witness everyday life for Paraguayans outside the hustle and bustle of the capital and main cities.
I planned to stop in Villarrica to see a typical Paraguayan town in the purgatory between urban and rural Paraguay characteristic of the country’s Eastern, more populated half. After spending the previous few nights in the former Aryan colony cum lakeside holiday retreat of San Bernadino and the bucolic Misiones town of Santa María de Fe, Villarrica was the final stop of my Paraguayan road trip, and I arrived without expectations.
Villarrica, Paraguay is a backwater – though I should note that the term “backwater” for me carries no negative connotations. Backwaters of less visited nations near universally elicit high praise from me. As a good friend of mine with a far better way with words once told me, “Backwaters are your milieu.” And as such, a stop in Villarrica was not at all out of the ordinary.
What I didn’t know about Villarrica prior to visiting ended up becoming my most prominent and lasting memory of the place: the capybaras of the city’s Manuel Guerrero Ortiz park.
An Introduction to the Capybara, World’s Largest Rodent
For those uninitiated into the world of Amazonian rodents, the capybara is the largest living rodent species in the world, commonly weighing in at over 100 pounds and of the size and stature of a bullmastiff. They are common across the South American rainforest, and easy to see throughout the rainforests, wetlands, and savannahs of the continent. Growing up, I was a dedicated armchair naturalist (not to be confused with naturist, mind you), and was keen to see capybaras in the wild. Capybaras also happen to be objectively cute.
A primary objective of my second foray into South America (after our 2016 Suriname and Guyana adventure) was to spot capybaras in the wild. My first chance encounter came in Brasília, Brazil’s hyper-modern (by 1960’s standards anyway) capital, where I had been stalking concrete architecture designed by Oscar Niemeyer in the 1950s and 60s.
My couchsurfing host and I were enjoying lunch on the shores of Paranoa Lake, and on the shore surrounded by picnicking weekenders, sat a solitary capybara, looking rather worse for wear. I also happen to be a sensitive soul, and seeing this capybara in its mangey state amongst the detritus from public revelers (beer cans, used drug paraphernalia, et al) was too much for me to handle emotionally. This poor fellow may as well have been a skeletal polar bear, floating on an ice flow.
With some temporal distance came disengagement and callousness, and I wondered, “Was it too much to ask of the universe to deliver a happy, well-fed capybara for my visual consumption?”
As it turned out, it would take an additional week on the road for the universe to listen to my pleas (fortunately, Brazil supplied ample opportunity for power crystal purchase, which I am sure allowed for easier manifestation of giant rodents), which brings this story back to Villarrica, Paraguay.
Exploring Villarrica, Paraguay
I arrived to Villarrica at the tail end of my road trip around the country’s East (sadly, was not able to visit the alluring Chaco this trip) after a long day on the road. The town hosts no accommodations bookable online, so I had found Hotel La Aurora del Guairá on Google Maps, booking ahead of time via the number posted to their wall on the street view photo. The hotel is named for Aurora, its convivial proprietress, who greeted me, the hotel’s first foreign guest, warmly. She kindly shooed the septuagenarian parking mafiosa away from my whip, aghast that a foreign dignitary would be asked to pay when visiting her humble town.
The hotel, like much of tropical Latin America’s vernacular residential architecture, was largely open (save the bars on the windows), and featured some color, pattern, and texture combinations that may have been questionable in more cynical parts of the world. My room sat facing the interior courtyard of the building, and featured hot water, a functioning A/C unit, and a masterfully folded towel swan. At the equivalent of around $10 USD for the night, the Hotel La Aurora del Guairá was the perfect place to rest my feet between destinations.
One doesn’t need a great sense of direction to get their bearings in Villarrica. The bulk of the action, including the town’s grocery store and bus station, sits on a couple of streets running north to south, parallel to Paraguay’s main North-South highway, Ruta 8. At the northern terminus of Natalicio Talavera boulevard sits the only semblance of a traditional tourist attraction: the stone built Iglesia de Ybaroty. I did not visit the church, so here is a link with some pretty pictures of the place. I am generally a concrete or bust type of guy.
Walking north from Hotel La Aurora del Guairá on Gregorio Benitez, the other of Villarrica’s main streets, I passed the city’s aforementioned hot spots before arriving to an auditorium vibrating with activity. Teenagers spilled out from a basketball tournament into the Parque Manuel Ortiz Guerrero, Villarrica’s iteration of makeout point.
Inside the park, apparently for generations, live a family of capybaras, their coats a resplendent umber. They are well fed by the residents of the city – Guairá is a key fruit producing region, a fact made evident by the rows of pickup trucks overflowing with watermelons throughout the city. The capybaras roam free in the park, save a makeshift pen from leftover chain link fence, and are at all times surrounded by watermelons, papayas, and other fruits in various states of consumption. The capybaras (three of them, when I visited) are plump and happy, and a joy to watch simply exist. Capybaras are rodents, after all, don’t expect any tricks.
And really, a walk through the town with an hour or so spent making googly eyes at the capybara family was about all I did in Villarrica. Once back to my hotel, I presented Aurora a gift of a mug from Starbucks, which she had never heard of. I prepared a small meal for myself of instant noodles and fresh fruit procured from the town market and retired early for my evening foreign road trip ritual of Netflix and chill. I had spent the better part of the previous few days on the road, and a low-key day in a low-key town was the perfect recharge before driving back to Paraguay’s bustling capital.
Practical Information for Visiting Villarrica, Paraguay
Villarrica is easily reachable from any of Paraguay’s main cities of Asunción, Encarnación, and Ciudad del Este by bus. That said, I argue that self-driving (if able) is the best way to see the country, allowing for quick stops in the country’s innumerable adorable towns. From Asunción, Villarrica is due west – I recommend driving on Ruta 2 rather than the Ruta 1. The former runs parallel to Paraguay’s once magnificent railway, and abandoned train stations dot the roadside, waiting for the eager explorer.
There are many great spots to visit in the immediate vicinity of Villarrica. Yataity, about 15 minutes drive north from town, is a center for A’o P’oi, a traditional Paraguayan embroidery, production in the country and can occupy an hour or two. La Colmena, to the southeast of Villarrica, is the center of the Japanese-Paraguayan diaspora, and the nearest town to Salto Cristal, a waterfall with spectacular swimming holes requiring a rather difficult, slippery hike to reach.
Accommodation wise, I cannot scream the praises of Hotel La Aurora del Guairá enough. Aurora is a kind and generous host and will make conversation with you for hours despite a lack of even Elementary level Spanish. The hotel is in the dead center of town, and rooms are as affordable as anywhere I’ve encountered in all my years of travel.
