capelo

On a trip to La Colmena in the Paraguari department, I found awesome landscapes with colourful scenes of urban life such as sugar cane plantations (quite important nowadays for etanol and alternatives to petrol), rainforest and waterfalls!

In these area of Paraguay, it is located the famous Salto Cristal waterfalls (70 mts high). You need to do a bit of a hike to reach them because it is just in the middle of a rainforest. The trip it is worthwhile though as the views are awesome and if it is hot enough you can even swim.

A couple of years ago I stayed overnight at this Monastery of the Benedictine Order in Santiago.

It was a great experience as they designed a spokesperson to communicate with us, at meals we have someone reading the bible, we have gregorian music sang at mass and we enjoyed great gastronomy with products prepared and grown in their farm.

For contact and more info use this site: http://www.monasterio.org.ar/modulotupasy-tupasy.htm

The town of Santa Maria de la Fe was established in 1647 by the jesuit order in the Jesuit Province of Paraguay. The town is renowned when the jesuit brought the first printer to the River Plate in the s. XVII.

Countless books were published in Santa Maria de la Fe, including a dictionary of the Guarani language, and a Cathesism in Guarani that were a notorius help to the survival of the Guarani language as we all know.

Nowadays, there is a museum with several wooden sculptures, a foundation for the preservation of the cultural heritage. Check http://www.cockaigne.demon.co.uk/santamaria/santamariahome.html for more details.