Olivia's Picks for Playgrounds & Parks in Asuncion

After living in Kingston, a city that had pretty much zero playgrounds, it’s been great to have access to so many in Asuncion. They aren’t as amazing as parks in the US (especially some we visited in California- seriously, many were five stars!) but Olivia loves them and they seem generally safe (I do have to check for rust and shards of wood, but generally speaking- not bad).

There's a playground in the Embassy compound, which will be taken out when they start construction on the new buildings. It’s not huge, but it’s close to our house and there’s a lot of green space at the Embassy for Olivia to run around when she gets tired of the playground (there are also lemon and tangerine trees that Olivia likes to pick!). There are a few parts of the play structure that are a little awkward (like going down the little slide, you have to lean down and bend/squeeze through to the platform).

Since the weather has been awesome in recent weeks (SoCal winter weather), we've been going to lots of other playgrounds too- a few favorites that we’ve been to include the playground at Parque de la Salud. It’s a free park with running trails, parcourse equipment, and a decent sized playground. There’s even a God’s Pan bakery right next to it, perfect for a coffee and snack to bring to the park while Olivia plays! Olivia likes this one because there are lots of ladders and ramps to climb.

The Plaza Infante Rivarola, which is next to a few of the malls in town, has some parcourse equipment and vendors selling goods, as well as a small playground. What I like about this one is that the equipment is just Olivia’s size and it’s made of recycled plastic, so no fear of rust or splinters (or tearing of pants like what happened to Olivia one time going down a slide at Parque de la Salud). Olivia likes their teeter totter and slides.

Last weekend, we went to a huge park called Ñu Guasú Park. It has cycling and paved walking trails, soccer fields, tennis courts, and a playground. Apparently it also has some Taiwanese gardens and a lake, but we only made it as far as the playground. Olivia seemed to really like this park, since there were lots of bridges to run across.

We have seen small, random playgrounds scattered around the city, as well. For example, there is a small plaza next to the Superseis by our house. It has one semi-rusty slide that I’ve let Olivia go on and a handful of functional swings. When she sees it on the walk to the store, we end up stopping there for a few minutes.

It's true, these parks pale in comparison to the fancy Carlsbad and Irvine parks. However, at the end of the day, Olivia likes to run around, climb, and be outside...and these playgrounds do the trick. Once summer comes, I am sure we will be hitting the pool instead of the playgrounds, but until then, these ones are awesome!