Landlocked in the centre of the continent and hemmed in by much bigger, more exotic locales, Paraguay is primarily rural and largely unspoilt. Relatively untouched by tourism, it is strongly influenced by its Guaraní heritage and by a turbulent history of dictatorship and oppression. Guaraní is still taught in schools and, outside the cities, it often replaces Spanish as the spoken tongue.

As a result of the unsavouriness of the country under Stroessner's rule, Paraguay has generally been omitted from many South American travel itineraries, and the country has acquired an undeserved reputation as boring and uninteresting amongst the travelling community. Because of a relative lack of demand, not much of a tourist infrastructure has been put in place, and there's little commercial buildup, especially compared with that of neighbouring countries like Argentina and Brazil; indeed, areas devoted to tourism concerns tend to be right at border crossings, like Ciudad del Este, which you'll hit coming from Brazil. Nevertheless, if you make the the journey you'll be rewarded with a sense of exploration and taste of a very unvarnished South America in the small villages and relatively untrammelled national parks that dot the land.