Salta-Tilcara-Humahuaca

Salta

Salta was all about chilling out for us. I think the main draw of the city is for relaxing and recuperating to ‘recover from the travelling’! So we followed suit and found a nice hostel that didn’t break the bank and checked out the town. The city is nice and has a lovely plaza as do all Argentinean towns and cities. We strolled around viewing the beautiful churches and watched a change of guards in the main square which went on way to long. It eventually just looked like lots of men prancing about on horses, what they were trying to re-enact we didn’t find out.

We visited the Museo de Arqueología de Alta Montaña which is a museum dedicated to the amazing discovery of three child mummies found at an altitude of 6700m on the Llullailaco volcano. Due to the freezing climate, the bodies and all that they were buried with were perfectly preserved. The children, two girls and a boy were probably sacrificed to the gods as special chosen ones. We were not allowed to take pictures so here’s a link to the museum site: www.maam.org

There was also a stage set up in the evening and a local band gave a concert which wasn’t half bad.

I decided to continue the serious business of chilling out with my book while Mal climbed the 1000 winding steps up Cerro San Bernardo to the lookout. Mal said the views were spectacular out over Salta and the Lerma valley, with a lovely park at the top.

I’m not to jealous, I still got the reward of a nice dinner that evening, and I didn’t even have to leave the comfort of my bed!

Tilcara

The bus to Tilcara wasn’t the most pleasant experience. We were sitting near the toilet and some poor man was obviously having a bad reaction to his food, with the smell of his efforts wafting out. Mal nearly puked sitting directly in the firing line, gasping for air through the jammed shut window.

Thankfully our bus was only going as far as San Salcador de Jujuy. We had a lovely lunch in the city and soon realised how close to Bolivia we were. The people looked different, markets sprawled onto the littered streets and the city was messier, less orderly than your average Argentinean city. It is definitely not a tourist city, more a living real place that cares little about the few tourists that wander from the bus terminal. We didn’t stay to long, catching a bus that arrived in Tilcara in the late afternoon. The trip was worth it as Tilcara is a lovely town with an artistic vibe about it. We stayed in a traditional style hostal and were invited to join the evenings BBQ, but declined as it is largely a meat affair and would leave me starving. It was a good decision as the restaurant we ate in had a traditional music show that evening.

We watched some folk dancing and two bands. The first was a folk singer and storyteller, with a strange looking guest traditional-mandolinesque player. The second had a more ethnic sound, with one guy playing a gigantically-long horn, almost swiping the heads of the patrons with every turn.

The next day we checked out Tilcara’s hilltop pucará, which is a pre-Hispanic fortress with unobstructed views of the surrounding hinterland, very pretty.

Humahuaca

The ride to Humahuaca was beautiful, driving alongside the Quebrada de Humahuaca. As we had so recently visited the Quebrada de Cafayate, we decided not to stop and do a tour as the landscape is so similar. We decided to simply enjoy the view from our bus window.

Humahuaca was our last Argentine stop before entering Bolivia. This is a mainly Quechuan village, being the people who occupied the land before the Spanish invasion. As we were walking down the street a little girl invited us to stay in her family’s guesthouse. This was our cheapest room in Argentina to date it wasn’t bad. We asked the mom if we could borrow two cups for our tea, and after a short rant about getting the cups back she eventually came up with a solution of giving us clean plastic jam containers! A little insulted we took the jam pots and enjoyed a nice cup of tea, washing and leaving them for the woman to reclaim the next day.

As it was a Sunday there wasn’t much happening in the town, although it is pretty. We walked around and up to the local monument, chatted with some nuns for Slovenia and Romania, and marvelled at the adobe houses. That weekend was the festival of Pachamama or Mother Earth. Although most of the country has adapted the Catholic religion they still hold on to some of their traditional beliefs and Pachamama is one of these. We saw even more of this once we crossed the border into Bolivia. As the country is so barren and the people don’t have much, they are reliant on Pachamama for a good harvest, for rain, for luck or whatever earthly need they have.

Pachamama isn’t the only mother who is important here, and we found many statutes in tribute to mothers everywhere. There was a particular rise in teenage un-wed mothers in these small Argentinean towns around late November or early December. These babies have locally been known as los hijos del carnival or the children of the carnival. During the carnival a lot of alcohol is drank and one thing leads to another, resulting in teen-pregnancies. In 2006 the government decided on a sex-education and condom-distribution programme for these northwest towns.

So thankfully then we missed the festival and entered a quiet town, leaving Argentina the next day to enter the wild west of Bolivia.