JARDÍN BOTÁNICO Y ZOOLÓGICO

This is Asunción's green lung. A large green park, including over a hundred hectares of forest, with century-old trees and numerous species of animals roaming freely (aguara guasu, armadillos, monkeys...). It was originally the country house(quinta) of Carlos Antonio López. Nearby, the president had built a railway station (Trinidad, Estación botánico) and the Santísima Trinidad church, which gave its name to the district. The garden, as it exists today, was created in 1919 by German scientists Carlos Friebig and Ana Gertz. It belongs to the municipality of Asunción, which runs a zoo. Apart from the elephant and hippopotamus, you can observe Paraguay's fauna: the giant anteater, the capybara, the taguá, felines such as the jaguar, puma or ocelot, monkeys, reptiles, etc. But despite the immensity of the park, the cages are not very large and should be much better maintained... Watching these poor felines turn around in such small, screened spaces can only make you feel uneasy, and you'd rather move on. Fortunately, two well-preserved colonial houses await you. Built in the 1840s, they now house museums. In Casa Baja, the Natural History Museum displays species stuffed or bathed in formaldehyde (sensitive souls abstain...). There's also a small museum devoted to the country's various indigenous cultures. Next door, in the elegant Casa Alta, where President López and his wife used to rest, there's a museum of history and antiquities (not always open). At the entrance to the botanical garden, the Solar de Artigas is a space dedicated to the Uruguayan revolutionary hero José Gervasio Artigas (1764-1850). He lived in exile in Paraguay for thirty years, and spent the last five years of his life in this house (the first years of exile were spent in Curuguaty, far from Asunción, on the orders of the paranoid Dr Francia). This part of the botanical garden was bequeathed to the Uruguayan government in 1903, in gratitude for the return of the trophies from the War of the Triple Alliance. The Uruguayan government created a public school and later a museum, the Museo Artigas Karaí Guasú. Tribute is paid to the yvyrá pytá tree(Peltophorum dubium), under which the Uruguayan hero spent long afternoons drinking mate with his friends.