Quebrada de Humahuaca

Hill of 7 colors – Purmamarca

Serranía del Hornocal (taken from 14,300 ft)

Kristen with the ‘sand art’ mountain at the Abra de Condores pass on the road to Iruya (taken from 13,100 ft)

Late afternoon at the Espinazo del Diablo, on the border of the Puna

After the bike race in San Lorenzo, we drove up to the Quebrada de Humahuaca, the most famous attraction in Jujuy province.  The Quebrada is a long valley, named as UNESCO world heritage site as it has been populated for over 10,000 years and has substantial Inca heritage.  It is also very close to the Bolivian border and the well-known altiplano (called the Puna in Argentina), and as such, everything there is to do in the Quebrada is at a pretty high altitude.

Our base of operations was in Tilcara, right in the center of the valley.  We stayed at Cerro Chico hotel, which is a very nice collection of individual cabañas just outside of town.  Our guidebook was pretty low on Quebrada detail (besides simple descriptions of the towns in the valley), so we were very grateful when the eccentric Frenchman named Nour who runs the hotel gave us the run-down on the best stuff to see.

We had a total of 2.5 days in the Quebrada:

Day 1 – we woke up the first day and got to breakfast right when it opened, at 8am (it was fantastic, by the way, with croissants imported from Buenos Aires – I guess that’s what you get when an eccentric Frenchman owns the place).  First stop was Purmamarca, home to the ‘Cerro de Siete Colores’, which seems to be on every postcard of the area.  The town itself was sort of underwhelming, though the artisan market in the square was the largest and cheapest we’ve ever come across.  We did a quick 3-4k hike around the hill, which was really stunning, and had lunch in town.  Afterwards, we began to drive up to the Salinas Grandes (salt flats).  But during the ascent up to the 13,700ft pass that leads to the Salinas, we both started to feel some altitude sickness, probably around 12,000ft.  While it was probably 80% psychological and 20% physical, we decided to turn around and head back to the valley.  (The guidebook said the Salinas weren’t that great, anyway).  We stopped in the town of Maimará to see the famed cemetery, and returned to the hotel.  Nour told us to rest for the remainder of the day, as we were likely still acclimating.

Day 2 – we woke up with a renewed drive to go see some awesome stuff.  After some more amazing croissants, we made our way up to the town of Humahuaca.  Nour had recommended we stop at every settlement along the way, but we don’t really care much for towns, so we only stopped in one, Uquia.  Uquia is known for really only one thing – it’s church, with paintings of various biblical figures holding muzzle-loaded rifles.  No pictures were allowed, which is a shame, since the pictures were hilarious.

From there we drove straight to the town of Humahuaca.  On the agenda was the Serranía del Hornocal, which Nour described as the best thing to see in the whole Quebrada.  It was not in any guidebook, nor in any review of the region we had ever seen, likely because the viewpoint was at 14,300 ft at the end of a long, bumpy road.  As such, it was just what we were after – incredible sights in remote places.  We saw only one other car on the road.

Today we were prepared for the altitude.  No way were were turning back today.  Kristen had taken some Diamox, we had a thermos full of coca tea, and we had begun chewing coca leaves on the way in (an ancient remedy for altitude sickness).  I started getting woozy at around 13,500 ft, but we soldiered on to the view point.  It was all it was promised to be – expansive views of an entire mountain range with crazy colored bands of rock running through it (red and purple for iron and arsenic, green for copper, etc.).  After we gaped at the incredible landscape for as long as we could stand, Kristen decided to see how many push-ups she could do at that altitude (50 it turns out).

When we got down, it was lunch time, but we weren’t hungry.  I guess altitude saps your appetite.  At that point we were debating what to do with the remainder of the day.  We had been discussing staying an extra day to make the trip to Iruya, a very remote village at the end of a gorgeous dirt road.  But as we were way ahead of schedule for the day, we decided to just go ahead and head toward Iruya that afternoon.  We decided on the way that if this was our last day, we also wanted to see the Puna.  So instead of driving all the way to Iruya (which we were told was ‘a one-picture town at most’), we drove up to the 13,100ft pass on road leading up to it (which we were told was not to be missed).  It was incredible – there was a bald-topped mountain that looked like sand art, with pinks and reds strewn about, and a gorgeous view into the valley where Iruya was located.  Afterwards, we high-tailed it up to the town of Tres Cruces, on the edge of the Puna, and within 20 or 30 miles of the Bolivian border.  We took in the desolate sights of the Puna, as well as a crazy rock formation called the Espinazo del Diablo (huge spine of the devil), and headed back to Tilcara, thoroughly exhausted.

Day 3 – on the way out of the Quebrada, we stopped again at Purmamarca, at Kristen’s request.  She spent 2 hours at the artisan market, while I read a book (the areas in the Quebrada are known for car break-ins, so I stayed with the car.  Which was fine with me.)

This was our last real adventure in South America, and we’re very glad we went.  The Serranía del Hornocal was definitely on our list of top 5 most spectacular things we’ve seen in the past year.