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- Filadelfia (Mennonite colony town) — The beating heart of Paraguayan Chaco life: Mennonite-built streets, simple blocky architecture, German-influenced bakeries and strong community-run cooperatives. Good place to feel how agriculture and community planning shaped the region, buy fresh cheese, and get straight answers about local logistics and tours.
- Museo Regional del Chaco (Filadelfia) — hidden gem — A small local museum most outsiders skip that stitches together Mennonite history, indigenous artifacts and the natural history of the Chaco. It’s compact, low-fuss, and full of context that makes the big landscapes make sense.
- Loma Plata — A working agricultural town that shows the Chaco’s transformation: irrigated fields, cooperative factories and rural markets. Walk the market in the
- Filadelfia (Mennonite colony town) — The beating heart of Paraguayan Chaco life: Mennonite-built streets, simple blocky architecture, German-influenced bakeries and strong community-run cooperatives. Good place to feel how agriculture and community planning shaped the region, buy fresh cheese, and get straight answers about local logistics and tours.
- Museo Regional del Chaco (Filadelfia) — hidden gem — A small local museum most outsiders skip that stitches together Mennonite history, indigenous artifacts and the natural history of the Chaco. It’s compact, low-fuss, and full of context that makes the big landscapes make sense.
- Loma Plata — A working agricultural town that shows the Chaco’s transformation: irrigated fields, cooperative factories and rural markets. Walk the market in the morning, try field-fresh dairy, and watch the enormous machinery that keeps this dry land productive.
- Ruta Transchaco (Trans-Chaco Highway) — Driving the Trans-Chaco is an experience in itself: long straight roads through quebracho forests, roadside shrines and sudden salt-pans or lagoons after rains. Stop at small rural trading points, watch birds off the road and appreciate how remote settlement lines were drawn across harsh landscape.
- Parque Nacional Defensores del Chaco — Paraguay’s largest national park and the Chaco’s best spot for intact dry forest, large mammals and rare birds. It’s not lush rainforest, but the open woodlands, giant termite mounds and sparse sky create a distinct ecology you won’t find elsewhere in Paraguay.
- Boquerón battlefield and memorial — The site of the first major battle of the Chaco War; you can still see trenches, small monuments and the local museum pieces. It’s quiet, meditative and gives insight into how the conflict shaped national memory in the region.
- Puerto Casado — tannin ruins & locomotive graveyard — hidden gem — Walk among rusting locomotives and tannin factory ruins from the late 19th/early 20th century; Puerto Casado tells the gritty story of resource extraction on the Paraguay River. Photogenic, eerie and full of local anecdotes—rarely crowded by tourists.
- Fuerte Olimpo — Riverfront gateway to northern Chaco wetlands: old fort ruins, a tight riverside town life and easy access to boat trips into seasonal marshes. Great for birding, meeting river communities and watching dramatic sunsets over broad waterways.
- Bahía Negra and its river islands — hidden gem — A tiny riverside town that’s the jumping-off for fishing, small island camps and visits to informal riverside villages. Locals come here to fish, harvest wild fruits and trade—real Chaco river culture, rarely seen on packaged tours.
- Estancia and indigenous community visits (around Filadelfia, Loma Plata, Puerto Casado) — Spend a night on a working Chaco estancia or arrange an ethical visit with Enxet/Nivaclé/Ayoreo communities to learn hunting, crafts and local ecology. These hands-on, place-specific experiences—staying with families, trying local food and learning survival knowledge—are uniquely Chaco and can’t be copied elsewhere.
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Hi, I’m Johan (Netherlands 🇳🇱), the creator of TakeYourBackpack. Over the past decade, I’ve backpacked through 80+ countries across six continents, gaining extensive experience with independent travel, long-term trips, and overland routes.