Routes and distances

Day trips from Asunción: Paraguay by distance

Almost everything worth seeing in Paraguay is organised from Asunción, and it comes down to one question: how many hours on the road are you willing to spend? These are the destinations ranked by that answer, with the kilometres we measure ourselves.

What there is, and how far from Asunción

These are the times our own fleet records, with one stop on the way included, which is how the drive actually goes. For the inner ring we give kilometres and not hours: over 55 km the time is decided by getting out of Asunción rather than by the road, and putting a number there would mean inventing it.

Why distance here is measured in hours

Paraguay is small on the map. From one end of the tourist map to the other there is little more than 500 km, which in another country would be five hours of motorway. It does not work that way here. Almost the whole network is single carriageway, it runs through the towns instead of around them, and it shares the tarmac with lorries, motorbikes and tractors. The useful figure is not how many kilometres there are but how many hours the drive will take out of your day.

You notice the difference as soon as you leave. The 327 km to Ciudad del Este take 4 h 30 min to 5 h; the 370 km to Encarnación take 5 to 5 h 30 min. Similar distances, similar times, because both roads are well paved. But the 530 km to Mariscal Estigarribia take around 8 hours, and so do the 535 km to Pedro Juan Caballero: out there a kilometre costs almost twice as much in time.

That is why this post is ordered by distance and not by how interesting each place is. A destination eight hours away is not “slightly further” than one five hours away: it is a different kind of trip, with a different budget and a night away that was not part of the plan. Deciding how many hours you are willing to drive first, and choosing the destination second, avoids the most common mistake here — an itinerary that works on paper and falls apart on the road.

The three rings around Asunción

Everything reasonable from the capital falls into one of these three. Picking the ring first is more useful than picking the destination.

1. 1
   

   Half a day: the inner ring

   Greater Asunción, between 8 and 25 km, and San Bernardino on Lake Ypacaraí, 55 km out. This is what fits into a morning or an afternoon without rearranging the day. Across the Remanso Bridge, Clorinda is 40 km away, the shortest crossing we run into Argentina. For this ring a driver at your disposal usually works out better than a point-to-point transfer: half a day is USD 127 and a full day USD 197, with as many stops as you like.

2. 2
   

   A long day: 190 to 370 km

   Formosa at 190 km, Trinidad and Jesús at around 290 km, Ciudad del Este at 327 km, Foz do Iguaçu at 340 km, Puerto Iguazú at 350 km, Pilar at 358 km and Encarnación at 370 km. All of them can be done in a day, and all of them make for a genuinely long one: 9 to 12 hours in the car there and back, plus the visit itself. The Iguazu Falls day tour leaves at 3 in the morning and is back the same night — 17 to 18 hours end to end.

3. 3
   

   Two days or a flight: 420 to 535 km

   Concepción at 420 km, Filadelfia at 450 km, Mariscal Estigarribia at 530 km and Pedro Juan Caballero at 535 km. Out here a same-day return stops being realistic and you have to budget a night away. It is also where the air taxi starts to make sense: Filadelfia is 2 h 15 min in the air against about 6 hours on the road each way.

4. 4
   

   And one special case: Saltos del Guairá

   There is no direct paved road from Asunción, so it does not belong to any ring. You get there by air, or overland via Ciudad del Este, which is a long detour. We spell it out because it is the destination people most often assume is just around the corner.

The full table: kilometres, hours and price

Price per vehicle and not per passenger, in a sedan for 1 to 3 passengers, one way. These are the August 2026 prices, quoted in US dollars.

The complete table, with return fares and minivan and Sprinter prices, is on our private transfers in Asunción page: we hold fixed prices for 237 destinations across all 16 departments of the country. The Formosa and Clorinda crossings run sedan only, because the border permits do not cover our larger vehicles.

When flying beats driving

Past about six hours on the road a flight stops being a luxury and becomes a calendar decision: what it buys you is not speed, it is the return day.

The flight price is for the whole aircraft, not per passenger, so with three on board the Cessna to Filadelfia works out at USD 500 each against USD 447 for the entire sedan. The return leg is included if you fly back the same day; if you stay overnight, add USD 220 per day of crew accommodation.

When to book us, and when not to bother

The same answer we give on WhatsApp when somebody asks.

What fits in the days you have

The arithmetic almost nobody does before booking: how many hours on the road an itinerary can carry before it stops being a holiday.

If the itinerary covers several destinations, chain them rather than coming back to Asunción every night: that is the mistake that adds the most driving hours without adding a single new place. The routes for each leg are in our travel guides.

What the road will ask of you

This applies to any destination beyond the inner ring, and it is what we tell passengers before setting off.

• Tarmac: good heading east on the PY02 and PY07, and south on the PY01. Towards the Chaco the Transchaco is paved but the side roads are not.
• Leaving Asunción: between 6:30 and 8:30 in the morning, and again in the evening, the exits clog up. Half an hour earlier at the start is half an hour earlier at the other end.
• Borders: Brazil and Argentina add 20 to 40 minutes of paperwork under normal conditions, and considerably more over long weekends and in December.
• Fuel: there are stations along every road east and south. In the Chaco the gaps between them are long, and it is worth filling up before you need to.
• Rain: heavy rain stretches the times everywhere, and the dirt roads of the Chaco and the north become impassable for hours.
• Mobile signal: patchy off the main roads, particularly in the Chaco.

The times we give are estimates under normal conditions, one stop included, and they can change with rain, roadworks or delays at the border. When we quote a route we give you the time we record ourselves, not the one the map calculates.

Frequently asked questions

The ones that reach us on WhatsApp when somebody is putting a Paraguayan itinerary together.

We tell you the hours before you book

Send us the destination and how many days you have. We will come back with the real driving time, whether it is worth driving or flying, and a fixed price per vehicle.

Price per vehicle · 30% deposit · free cancellation up to 24 hours before · August 2026 prices.