Aregua

Aregua sits on a series of low red hills above Lake Ypacaraí, close enough to Asuncion that it functions as the capital’s weekend escape valve, and I arrived on a Sunday to find half the city seemingly already there. Families spread picnic blankets along the lakeshore, teenagers rented paddleboats shaped unconvincingly like swans, and vendors sold chipa and cold Coca-Cola from coolers dragged on wheeled carts. It was chaotic in the specific, cheerful way that Latin American public leisure often is, and I found myself grinning without quite meaning to.

What separates Aregua from a simple lake town is the pottery. The hills here are made of a distinctive red clay, and for generations local families have turned it into ceramics sold along the main street in stalls stacked with jugs, vases, and roof tiles in every shade of terracotta and ochre. I wandered into a workshop where a woman named Norma was shaping a pitcher on a manual wheel, her hands moving with the unhurried confidence of forty years of practice, and she let me try — badly — while her grandson watched from a doorway, laughing at my lopsided attempt.

We climbed the Cerro Koi, a rocky outcrop above the town crowned by boulders locals believe hold pre-Columbian significance, and from the top the whole scene resolved itself — the lake spread out silver-blue, the terracotta roofs of the pottery district clustered below, and beyond it the low green hills rolling toward the horizon. A strawberry vendor at the base of the hill sold us a paper cone of berries dusted in sugar, grown in the small farms that ring the town, and we ate them sitting on a low wall watching the lake traffic drift by.

When to go: Weekdays offer a quieter, more contemplative version of the town if crowds aren’t your preference; strawberry season runs roughly August through October.