Today we took a day trip to the Jesuit ruins of La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná and Jesús de Tavarangue. The ruins are some of the most impressive tourist sites in Paraguay and they are still relatively undiscovered.
Of the two sites, Trinidad is the easier to access. From the main bus terminal in Encarnación, we got on a bus heading back to Ciudad del Este and bought two tickets to Trinidad for 20,000 guaraní ($3.33) total. The bus took a while to get out of the city and we arrived in Trinidad about 45 minutes later. The bus driver dropped us off on the side of the road near a brick archway that appeared to lead into town. Just past the first street on the left was an arrow pointing to the ruins. Since the sign was after the street, we couldn’t tell if it meant this left or the next one, so we kept walking up the hill. Two streets later, we turned onto what looked like a relatively main road, and as we we walked down it, ruins appeared in the distance. We were approaching the ruins from the back and when we came around the corner, we realized we had missed the entrance and had to walk back down the hill to buy tickets. Best to make the first left when the sign tells you to! Although, we would have missed these really cool carved rocks if we hadn’t taken the scenic route.
The entrance fee is 25,000 guaranís ($4.17) and gives you entry to three Jesuit ruin sites in Paraguay over a 72-hour period: La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná, Jesús de Tavarangue, and San Cosme y Damián.
At Trinidad, the entry fee included a guided tour in Spanish which was helpful to understand all the different buildings and some of the history of the missions. The missions were small communities established by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries in South America. These enclosed, self-sufficient communities were set up in areas where indigenous people lived and the missionaries provided education and community structure in addition to spreading religion. They maintained many aspects of the culture of the indigenous population that lived within the societies. Each mission could support up to 5,000 people.
The Jesuit Mission at Trinidad is considered one of the largest of the 30 missions that were located in the Rio de la Plata area. It was founded in 1706, later than most of the others, and was a rather ambitious project given its size. The large church in the middle was an elaborate construction which had a domed roof and intricate stonework. The Trinidad Mission was only operational for 61 years because the Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish Empire in 1767. The ruins at Trinidad are the most well preserved of the missions and along with the ruins of Jesús were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993.
Intricate stonework at La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná:
After the tour at Trinidad, we wanted to visit the ruins at Jesús. Jesús is 11km away from Trinidad and is not walkable. We had read that a bus between Trinidad and Jesús had been established a few years ago, so we asked at the entry to the Trinidad ruins where to catch it. If you walk down the hill from the visitor center to the entrance to the town and turn right on Ruta 6, there is a gas station 200 meters away where you can catch the bus. Alternatively, this is also where you can catch a taxi. As we were walking down the road, we saw a dog run into the road directly in front of a passing pickup truck. It was one of those moments where you know exactly what is going to happen right before it does and there’s nothing you can do about it. The dog got hit, yelped, ran around in circles and then laid down and died. It was really sad and we were in a bit of a shock so we stood there on the other side of the road for a while trying to unsee the event.
Eventually, we continued our walk to the bus stop where we met a woman from Jesús who was waiting for the bus to return home. She told us she had been waiting for an hour already and had reason to believe the bus would not be coming for another two hours. We’re not sure where she got the information, but since she had a vested interest in getting home, we believed her. Shortly thereafter, a taxi driver pulled across the street from the gas station and offered us a ride to and from Jesús for 70,000 guaranís ($11.67). Since the bus was supposed to cost 7,000 guaranís, we told him no. The woman from Jesús asked how much it would cost her and he quoted her 10,000 guaranís which she scoffed at. Apparently, the taxi shouldn’t cost more than 7,000 per person. We decided to sit down and drink maté while we waited for the bus. Just as we were getting settled, a second taxi driver came by and offered to take us to Jesús for 20,000 guaranís. We negotiated the price down to 15,000 and hopped in with the woman.
Scenes from Jesús de Tavarangue:
The Jesús Mission was first established in 1685 near the Monday river but it relocated multiple times. It arrived at its final site in 1760, just seven years before the Jesuits were expelled from the area, so the Mission was never completed. The church, which was being constructed as a replica of the Sanctuary of Loyola in Spain, would have been the largest church of any of the missions had it been completed.
Each of the ruins sites has a nighttime light and sound show. We didn’t stay for it as the logistics of visiting the ruins at night by public transportation seem rather complicated, especially because it’s really hard to know the schedules of the buses. This was demonstrated to us when we asked at the ticket office at 3:30pm where to catch the bus back to Trinidad and were told the last bus had left at 3:00pm. The ruins close at 6:00pm, so it’s a little confusing that the last bus leaves so early, and there isn’t any information about the bus schedule that we could see. We did learn a lesson to ask about the schedule of the buses as soon as we arrive so we know how to leave in the future. The woman at the ticket office called us a taxi which was a bit more expensive than normal because it had to come from Trinidad to pick us up, but at 30,000 guaranís, it still made the whole excursion cheaper than the price the first taxi driver quoted us.
We were dropped back at the gas station in Trinidad and we walked back towards to ruins until we found a bus stop. There was a couple there who was also waiting for the bus to Encarnación, so we all waited together until a bus showed up. We waved it down, climbed on, and paid the 20,000 guaraní fare ($3.33) for two tickets. We made it back to Encarnación around 6pm.
So far ruins are my favorite. Am amazing brick work.