Where The Streets Are Paved in Cheap Empanadas

With our finances dwindling and our return to the states still long on the horizon, Emily and I have decided to head up north, where the living is miraculously cheaper. Fortunately, the warm and arid region of Argentina where we've ended up is also full of many colorful and interesting sights.

After securing an apartment rental in Salta beginning April 1st, we continued on to the city of Jujuy, which is very fun to say (hoo-hooey!). The bustling, Andean city is useful as a jumping-off point for the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a stunning gorge that boasts polychrome strata, eerie rock formations, and picturesque villages that feel lost to time.

Our first stop en route was the tranquil hamlet of Pumamarca, whose sights include a beautifully austere 17th century church, an impossibly crowded, cactus-strewn cemetery, and a dramatic mountain--El Cerro de los Siete Colores--that towers above the town. We took a long walk around the rainbow-colored rock, counting many more than seven shades of orange, pink, grey, and green. We also loitered around the central square, where squat old women sell weavings and other wares. After sampling lomo de llama for dinner (it tastes kind of like pork, but... smokier?), we retired to our tent, which we'd foolishly staked a mere six inches from four of the most annoying girls in Argentina. They stayed up all night taking flash photos of each other and singing Bob Marley's "Jammin", but I think one of them got trapped in the bathroom the next morning, which I attribute to karma.

From Purmamarca we continued up the gorge to the slightly larger town of Tilcara. Boasting a campground with a) space and b) grass, we were wholly prepared to love place. However, resolving to attempt an asado, we almost came to grief in "downtown" Tilcara, where none of the stores are ever open, and don't stock anything even when they are. Thankfully, we finally found a butcher willing to hack some slabs off a hanging cow carcass, and a bakery with stale bread. No one in town had any carbon, but by shovelling together the coals from extinguished asado fires back at the campground, we were able to get a flame going. Sadly, we had to eat our steaks in the dark, as we'd neglected to remember that the sun sets hours earlier than it does in Patagonia.

The next morning we were tricked into ordering the world's foulest coffee (3 parts powdered milk to 1 part instant coffee, add boiling water) before setting out for the Pukara--the imposing ruins of an enormously complex pre-Columbian fortress that was used briefly by the Incas. Roaming around the reconstructed stone walls and ominous sacrificial altars, we were willing to overlook Tilcara's other flaws. And, because our tickets to the Pukara also got us into an archeology museum housing Andean mummies, we decided that Tilcara deserved a thumbs-up.

For the next week or so, we'll continue climbing up the gorge, reaching altitudes of 4000m. as long as our tender American lungs don't collapse. We plan to poke around at least three or four more of these tiny hamlets before ending up in Bolivia where, my mother warns me, they have something called "the road of death". -NSH