Areguá and Lake Ypacaraí, clay and water

The quickest way to understand that Asunción is not Paraguay is to take the road east and stop forty minutes later. Areguá begins with a cobbled slope and, on both sides, rows of terracotta pots standing directly on the pavement.

A town of clay

Ceramics in Areguá is not a shop: it is a visible supply chain. Along the main street you can see the workshops with the wheel at the back, the kiln in the yard, unfired pieces drying in the shade and finished ones displayed outside. Large garden pots, figurines, plates, hand-painted vessels, and — in the months before Christmas — industrial quantities of nativity figures.

The workshops are often family-run and take commissions as well as selling retail. Anyone looking for local small-batch production, or pieces to a design, will find real counterparts here: this is one of the places where artisanal Paraguay and commercial Paraguay touch directly.

The upper town

Above the potters' street is the historic centre, and it is worth the ten-minute climb. Low colonial houses in faded colours, courtyards with enormous trees, a church in a commanding position, and from the square a view running down to the lake.

For decades Areguá was a summer retreat for Asunción families, and it retains a number of early twentieth-century villas in varying states of repair. In recent years part of that heritage has been recovered as cultural space: galleries, studios, small private museums, cafés.

The lake

Lake Ypacaraí is famous far beyond Paraguay thanks to the guarania Recuerdos de Ypacaraí, one of the most performed songs in the Latin American repertoire. The reality of the lake is more complicated than the song.

It is a shallow body of water, sensitive to pollution in its basin and to algal blooms. Its quality is subject to public monitoring and to a succession of interventions over the years with mixed results. It is a matter of serious debate in the country, and visitors would do well to check the current situation before planning any activity in the water.

None of which takes anything away from the shore. At sunset, from the Areguá jetty, the light on the water and on the hills behind San Bernardino explains perfectly why somebody wrote that song.

Planning the day

It is a little over half an hour by car from Asunción. Morning among the workshops, lunch in the upper town, afternoon by the lake. In harvest season the strawberry fair is added, which is when the town is at its busiest and makes the most sense.

And the general rule for Paraguay outside the capital applies: bring cash. Many workshops have no card terminal.