The hook
One of South America's last great wildernesses, a vast, hot, thorn-forest plain teeming with wildlife and dotted, improbably, with prosperous German-speaking Mennonite farming colonies carved out of the bush.
01Why it's worth it
The Gran Chaco is an immense, sparsely-populated lowland of dry thorn forest, savanna, and seasonal wetland that sprawls across northern Paraguay and into its neighbours, one of the largest and least-disturbed wild areas on the continent after the Amazon. Harsh, remote, and brutally hot, it is a refuge for remarkable wildlife: it holds one of the healthiest populations of jaguars in South America, along with pumas, giant anteaters, tapirs, peccaries (including a species once thought extinct), armadillos, and an extraordinary richness of birds, best sought in the national parks like Defensor del Chaco and the salt lakes and lagoons that draw flamingos. Its human story is just as unusual: in the early 20th century, communities of Mennonites, conservative German-speaking Anabaptists, settled the inhospitable central Chaco and, against the odds, built neat, orderly, and thriving farming colonies (like Filadelfia and Loma Plata) that stand in surreal contrast to the surrounding wilderness and the indigenous Chaco peoples. Genuinely off the map, requiring effort, a 4x4, and a tolerance for heat and rough conditions, the Chaco rewards the adventurous with big wildlife, birding, and a fascinatingly odd cultural landscape.
02How to experience it
Reach the central Chaco via the Mennonite colonies (Filadelfia, Loma Plata), which make the practical base, and explore the national parks and wetlands with local guides and a 4x4 for wildlife and birding; jaguars are present but elusive. Go in the cooler, drier months, prepare for heat, dust, and remoteness, and treat it as genuine frontier travel.