Blogs from Tilcara, Jujuy, Argentina, South America

Finally, we got to Salta. We found a room at a place called El Alcazar. Pretty good really – reasonably priced and comfortable. We spent a couple of days there, and our luck seemed to suddenly turn around. One of the things to do in Salta – apart from eating a lot of excellent salteñas – is to look at the museum with the dead Inca kids. They have three of them, and rotate them as each one starts to thaw. We went down there to have a look inside, and were prepared to pay the money that day. As our luck normally runs, the bloke had gone out and had shut the place for 5 minutes. That decided us – we had no particular desire to look at more desiccated corpses - we opted to ... read more

Well, I got to Tilcara, Argentina on Friday night and decided to hit the bank in order to pay for my hostel... that´s when I realized, I was missing my debit card. Well, I immediatly panicked; considering I had two pesos on me (not kidding, two pesos), am traveling alone so I can´t just borrow money from a friend, plus, it was friday night so the banks were already closed. On top of that, it was the weekend of Carnaval, so the banks were closed until Tuesday. I went into a tour agency, on the verge of tears, asking about a hotel in order to use my credit card to pay, but the town is so small, no one accepts credit cards. Well, I walked into the right place, they were the nicest people- lent me ... read more

As we were reserving our hire car, the American guy who had been before us and had gone out to take his car, came back in and asked if they had any automatics....turned out he'd never driven a non-automatic and had just assumed that all cars in Argentina would be, just like in the US! We saw him and his girlfriend walking towards the bus station later in the day looking rather down - isn't it funny the assumptions we make about the world based on our own home experiences. Luckily everything went smoothly for us when we picked our car up the following day and soon we were heading north on the very winding Route 9 to Jujuy, the capital of Jujuy Province. The road was slow but the views in the (of course) bright ... read more

In case you don’t want to read the whole thing, here’s the highlights: *Intensely precise indigenous flute players *Multi-colored mountains *A night out at a bar in Tilcara, Argentina *Numerous giant cacti *Ping-Pong/Drinking games with the bus driver *Incredible stars lying next to llamas Ok, now onto Jujuy, Tilcara, Humahuaca, La Quebrada, Los Salares, y Purmamarca. If all those names sound indigenous to you, that’s because this part of Argentina feels literally like a different country, even more so than the deep jungle of Misiones province. The people here live a much different lifestyle, not only relying on the existence of tourism, but also enjoying their own culture specific to each town. For example, anyone living near the salt flats can tell you all about Pachamama (Mother Earth), the Medicinal/Remedial god (forgot the name), and the ... read more

After nearly six weeks in Argentina, it was time to move on. For my final few days in the country, I headed to Tilcara, a small village in the Quebrada de Humahuaca north of Jujuy. It was absolutely beautiful....you know how sometimes you get off the bus somewhere, and you just know you've made the right decision going there? Tilcara was like that. It's an interesting combination of modern and traditional - touristy without being in-your-face touristy. Upmarket tourist hotels and restaurants nestled side by side with traditional buildings made of adobe, in streets that trailed off into the mountains beyond. It's an incredibly arid area, as it hardly rains at all (although it did rain while I was there) and the main attraction - apart from the mountains - is the Pukará, a pre-Inca fortress ... read more

Buenos dias amigos! For the last couple of weeks we have been up and down some of the most picturesque valleys of northern Argentina. Argentina is such a huge country with so many completely different environments, it's like another country here in the Northern provinces compared to Patagonia. Some people say that Tucuman (where I left you last time) is like a dividing point, south of Tucuman being an Argentina more similar to Europe with the majority of people being of European stock and north of Tucuman being much more Andean territory, where the inhabitants are darker skinned, of mixed Indian and Spanish origin and more similar to Bolivians or Peruvians than to Europeans. We have found that more or less to be true and have loved experiencing a completely different culture from all that ... read more