Parque National Ybycuí

Salto Guaraní. (No doubt the first of way too many waterfalls on this RTW trip!)

Doing a day trip to Ybycuí National Park, which lies about 25 miles from the town, proved to be a bit of a challenge.  We heard that there was limited bus service (i.e. one in the morning and one in the evening) but had little to go by in terms of location and times.  As luck would have it, a Paraguayan couple overheard us asking about the bus and offered to give us a lift.  They were from Ita (a town close to Asunción) and had come down to the park to camp for the weekend.

The park itself is a museum-preserve hybrid.  Due to its water resources, the park was the site of Paraguay’s first iron foundry and was more or less the core of industrialization in the country.  The foundry also holds important military significance since it was one of Paraguay’s only means to arm itself during the War of the Triple Alliance in the 1800′s.  The stone furnaces and ruins of the workers’ facilities have been set up as a museum that was actually pretty good.

Waterfalls and butterflies were the main attractions at the park.  We walked to one of the closer waterfalls and saw a great plenty of spiders along the way.  There were also some nice overlooks (miradores) but those were substantial multi-hour hikes and we had neither the food nor the water for one of those.

Getting home was a bit of a challenge.  We had hoped to catch a 4pm-ish bus back to the village but the park ranger informed us that it was no more (or as Amy puts it: “he explained some system that made no sense”).  Fortunately for us (and probably him), he had a friend nearby with a “taxi” that would take us back to down for $20.  That was a bit much but we lucked out on transportation earlier in the morning and, lets face it, we weren’t going to walk 20 miles back to town.

A nice couple from Ita, Paraguay who were headed to the park to camp gave us a lift.		Remains of what was once Paraguay´s largest iron foundry. La Rosada.	The national park at Ybycuí has some big bugs!		Some teamwork required on the hike to Salto Guaraní
Salto Guaraní. (No doubt the first of way too many waterfalls on this RTW trip!)	One of the only pictures I managed to get of the big blue butterflies at the park.	La mariposa está volando			Ants being ants.
Red dirt is everywhere in Paraguay		Dinner at the hospedaje. Steak with onions, rice, an egg plus salad and bread. Approx $4.	Somebody wants some of my steak!