Road Trip, Beef & Charcoal.
The Chaco, Paraguay
Geographical info
The Chaco it’s not your everyday visit.
The Chaco or Region Occidental (Western Region) is a semi-arid region in Paraguay, the Chaco region typically averages no more than 50 cm of rainfall a year. The rains tend to be irregular and quickly turn into the brick red mud synonymous with all the dirt roads and pick-up trucks here, as the Chaco is flat only 310 meters above sea level, there’s no runoff, so excess rainwater just pools around and evaporates. The Chaco is sparsely populated, making up for more than 60% of Paraguay's land mass area, but with less than 3% of its population, this makes the Chaco one of the least populated areas of South America.
The surrounding Grand Chaco area which spreads into Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil has a land areal of 1,100,000 km² or twice the size of France, of this the Paraguayan contribution is about the size of Great Brittan. WOW. Many of those living in the region are indigenous. It Chaco is spread over the departments of Boquerón, Alto Paraguay and the Department of Presidente Hayes.
The vegetation of the Chaco varies from the east to the west, reflecting the changing nature of the soil. Eastern Chaco is noted for its more sparsely timbered landscape of trees and shrubs.
To the west, it’s arid with spiny, thorny shrubs and low trees adapted to more arid conditions.
Surviving in these conditions is the quebracho trees “literally translated to Break axe” a dense hardwood of economical resource rich in tannin and lumbar, tannin from lumbar here is the same tannin that colours rivers, streams, and lakes black in other heavily forested areas. More importantly now-days is its use in the charcoal industry with quebracho has become the quality yardstick for the worlds charcoal industry.
The ground is all fine brick red dust/dirt, what Australians call bulldust, It coats everything with an orange dust, and when wet it turns into red mud, a dirty muddy pick up is a status symbol otherwise you’re just a city slicker passing through.