Concepción, Agencia IP.- After stone, memory, and heat, the journey called for water. Tagatiyá appeared on the map as a bright green point within the grounds of the Ña Blanca ranch, about 85 kilometers from Vallemí, but getting there was part of the story as well. The north does not allow itself to be crossed without trials: it must be traveled with patience, accepting its rhythms and its jolts.

As the bus moved along the asphalt and the heat seeped in even through the open windows, exhaustion overtook me for a few minutes. I was dozing with my head resting when a sharp jolt woke me. The blast was immediate: the inner tube of one of the tires had burst after hitting a pothole. The vehicle stopped, and almost without instruction, we all shifted to the opposite side to balance it. The sun beat down relentlessly, the air seemed motionless, and for a moment, the journey was suspended in the middle of the road, as if the land itself were reminding us that the destination is the journey.

An hour and a half after leaving Vallemí, the landscape began to change. White soil gave way to a denser green, and suddenly a modest sign announced our arrival. The stream runs calmly, its crystal-clear waters revealing the stony bottom, as if it had nothing to hide.

The contrast was immediate. After the liberating enclosure of the Santa Caverna and the historical solemnity of Kamba Hopo, Tagatiyá offered another kind of silence, lighter. The heat was still there, but it no longer weighed on us. The body understood at once that this was the rest it had been waiting for.

Surrounded by ferns, bamboo groves, and native trees, it is no surprise that many call it the «Paraguayan Bonito.» Image: Courtesy.

I let myself be carried by the water, floating on my back and gazing at the open sky, and felt the contrasts finally meet: movement and stillness, journey and pause, heat and coolness. Below the surface, small fish slipped through the light shadows of the stones, reminding us that here life does not hide; it coexists.

The air had a clean, profound smell, of a stream just awakened, of humid forest, of breathing earth. I then thought of Heraclitus and his idea that no one bathes twice in the same river: not only because the water flows, but because one is no longer the same after bathing in it. There, floating, that phrase ceased to be theory.

Only when the body fully surrendered to the water did I understand the impossible color of Tagatiyá, somewhere between emerald green and turquoise. It was not a trick of the light: stone runs beneath it. The stream flows over a bed of ancient, carbonated limestone, which filters the water, cleans it, and makes it transparent. From there, the bottom is visible with an almost pedagogical clarity: pale stones, moving fish, life flowing without haste.

The air had a clean, profound smell, of a stream just awakened, of humid forest, of breathing earth.

Tagatiyá rises in the San Luis Range, fed by tributaries descending from the forests of northern Concepción. It divides into branches: the Tagatiyá Guazú and the Tagatiya’i, and reunites before emptying into the Paraguay River. Surrounded by ferns, bamboo groves, and native trees, it is no surprise that many call it the «Paraguayan Bonito»: not as a comparison, but as an affirmation that here, too, beauty is explained by geology and felt through the body. Merleau-Ponty said that we do not inhabit a landscape; we are part of it as we perceive it. In Tagatiyá, that idea becomes tangible.

Surrounded by ferns, bamboo groves, and native trees, it is no surprise that many call it the «Paraguayan Bonito.» Image: Courtesy.

Later, back on solid ground, we shared a simple yet memorable lunch: hot noodles with grated Paraguayan cheese, a happy innovation against the industrial, as local as it is authentic, sopa paraguaya, and natural juices of acerola and lemonade.

Tagatiyá was the perfect closing to the journey. Then we headed back to the city. The return trip was quiet, as if there were an unspoken agreement not to break the delicacy of what had been lived. The asphalt reappeared, the houses, the lights, the routines. And yet everything felt slightly unreal, as if that weekend in the north, among caves, rock outcrops, and transparent waters, had been one of those dreams that do not dissolve upon waking.

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