Laguna Blanca
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Laguna Blanca

Laguna Blanca

Spring-fed lake over white sand in San Pedro, the only water in Paraguay you can see the bottom of

Paraguay's rivers are brown and its lakes are green. Laguna Blanca is neither: 147 hectares of spring-fed water lying on a bed of white calcified sand, clear enough to see fish at seven metres. People come here to dive, which is not a sentence anyone expects to write about a landlocked country with no mountains.

The lake sits on private land in Santa Bárbara district, San Pedro, about 270 km north of Asunción off Ruta 3 and 28 km east of Santa Rosa del Aguaray. It has been run as Rancho Laguna Blanca since 1997 and was formally declared a protected area under private ownership in 2010, covering 804 hectares including the surrounding cerrado.

That cerrado is the second reason to come. This is the southernmost patch of the Brazilian cerrado ecosystem and it holds species that occur nowhere else in Paraguay — 283 bird species have been recorded, and the sand-dune lizards and frogs here have produced a run of new-species descriptions. Herpetologists know this place.

There is camping, rustic lodging and a small restaurant; bring what you need. Weekends in January it is a Paraguayan holiday spot with music and beer; midweek out of season it is empty. The road in is unpaved and rain makes it slow. Bring a mask even if you do not dive.

Guide

Activities

Paraguay's bookable supply is unusual, and it is worth knowing the shape of it before you start emailing.

More than half of what a traveller can actually book here belongs to an institution rather than a company: SENATUR runs the Jesuit missions and the Asunción walking tour, ITAIPU runs the dam, a Mennonite co-operative runs the Chaco museums, a diocese runs two of the best museums in the south, and conservation NGOs run the reserves. Those bodies answer landlines and email, in office hours.

The private operators are a different story. Every one of them found in this sweep answers WhatsApp, from a 1986 receptive agency in the capital to a four-room lodge in a mission village.

So: for anything state-run, write or telephone, and expect a slower answer. For anything privately run, message it.