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Getting the Bus to Santa María

If time permits, many people like to spend a night or two in Asunción before travelling down to Santa María. We can arrange to have you met at the airport by a driver who will take you to where you are staying in the capital. For this we need to know not only your expected arrival time but also your flight number and airline. The driver will meet you with a notice showing your name.

In Asunción we recommend the small family pensión run by Rosa Ortiz: it is a lovely house, centrally situated, and Rosa speaks English.

Our driver can also take you to the bus station, help you buy your ticket and put you on the right bus. Let us know what you would like to do and we will arrange it for you. If you would like to be driven all the way down to Santa María we can arrange that too, but below are the instructions for coming by public bus.

How to take a public bus to Santa María

There is one bus per day that goes directly to Santa María. It leaves at 11.45 am and the name of the bus company (la empresa) is Mariscal López. They do not have their own ticket window, but you buy the ticket at the window of the Alborada bus company. The fare costs Gs28,000. The journey takes about four and a half hours, and at the end they will drop you right at the door. As you drive into Santa María the conductor will ask you where you want to get off, and you just say “Hotel”. We would expect you to arrive about 4.15 to 4.30pm.

If you want to travel at a different time or on a Sunday you will need to get a bus to San Ignacio, of which there are many - about one an hour. A lot of bus companies do this route (to Encarnación) and the best way to find out which is the next bus to leave is to ask at Información in the middle of the ground floor: “Cuál es el próximo colectivo a San Ignacio?”

The journey takes about 4 hours, three and a half if you are very lucky. San Ignacio is the town after San Juan, which is the town after San Miguel, which is the town after Villa Florida, which is on the river Tebicuary. In San Ignacio you get off at the Plaza, and can look for a taxi there, or we can meet you if we know which bus you are coming on. If our driver helps you get the bus in Asunción, he can ring and tell us, and then we can be waiting with a car.

If you get your own taxi, ask for Santa María, then the Plaza. They may not know yet where the Santa Maria Hotel is (because we are so new), but if you look for the cross under a little roof in the corner of the square you will find the Hotel just by it, next to the house on the corner which is the craft workshop. The taxi journey costs Gs30,000.

information updated in April 2009

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