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Thursday, March 21: We were up at 5:20 and had breakfast in the hotel. The colorful
24-passenger tour bus (La Veloz del Norte) was in the square a little before its scheduled
6:30 departure. As we left town, the road took us up a high hill where we had a great view
of Salta by night. (It was still completely dark.) Soon after, we were in the mountains.
There was a beautiful sunrise as we went through the Santa Laura pass. We crossed into
Jujuy Province and continued past its capitol, San Salvador de Jujuy (simply called
Jujuy).
It was a sunny day and already very warm by the time the bus finally made its first
stop at the village of Tumbaya (pop 150; alt. 6500 ft). Surprisingly, there were no rest
rooms. The little church there, rebuilt in 1873, bore a plaque indicating that the shot that
killed General Lavalle (more than 140 years earlier) was fired from the bell tower. What
happened after that is a grizzly story. Lavalle was a hero of the independence movement.
His followers carried his body north toward Bolivia to keep it from falling into the hands of
his enemies. It was slow going on horseback, and decomposition set in. More later!
Our next stop was at Purmamarca (pop. 150; alt. 6825 ft.), a picturesque village lying at the foot of the spectacular Mountain of Seven Colors. Here there were rest rooms, as well as numerous stands at which the Indian inhabitants sold artifacts they made. It was a long stop, and we had plenty of time to browse. It appeared that the tourist buses were the primary, perhaps the only, source of revenue for the villagers.
The bus continued on to Tilcara (pop 2,200; alt. 8000 ft), famous for its restored hilltop pucara' (fortress), probably a 10th century Indian village. There was also an interesting cactus garden there. One very large variety was named "old man's head" (cabeza de viejo) and looked it, life-size with gray hair covering the bulbous tips of each limb.
As the bus continued north, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, marked by a large concrete monument. We had now left the Temperate Zone and were in the Tropic Zone. The bus didn't stop again until we got to Humahuaca (pop 4,000; alt. 9550 ft.), our northernmost destination. The driver was rushing to get us to the main square before noon, when an automated statue of St. Francis Solano on the front of the Cabildo (rebuilt in 1930) makes its daily appearance to give his blessing. The pretty town church (rebuilt in 1723) was also on the same square. It has an large gilded altar and reredos. On another side of the square was wide, long stairway leading to the top of the hill where stood a huge monument to the War of Independence.
We all had lunch at a restaurant called La Pena de Fortunato. We sat next to a young British couple. She spoke Spanish and translated for him. It was our best lunch experience in Argentina. They served "regional food." We tried the empanadas, choco de humita' (corn husks filled with grated corn mixed with a sauce of onion, pepper, tomato, and sweet basil), and locro (a watery stew of boiled corn, other vegetables and various unidentifiable bits of meat, including tripe). We passed on the cabrito (kid) and took ice cream rather than the alfajores, pastries with a very sweet filling.
What made the lunch especially enjoyable was the floor show. Four Indians
wearing colorful sarapes played and sang mostly their traditional music (having only five
notes). Most of the time there were three stringed instruments, including a guitar and
sometimes a banjo. One of the instruments was a charango, a 5-stringed instrument about
the size of a ukelele, but made from the shell of an armadillo. They sometimes played a
caja (goat skin drum) and two kinds of flute. One of these looked and sounded very much
like a pan flute; its music was beautiful. When the Indians played the well known song of
Salta (which even we had learned to recognize and enjoy), most of the spectators sang
along. The Indians performance of El Condor Pasa (known in the U.S. as I'd Rather Be
a River than a Stream) was particularly beautiful.
After lunch, the tour bus headed back to the south. We (especially Jane) had been in the hot sun on the drive north; now that it was afternoon, we were in the sun again going south. It was miserable! Our first stop, only a few miles down the road, was the village of Uquia. It had the oldest church in the area, a small chapel built in 1691, still with the original altar.
Heading south again, the next village was Huacalera (pop. 100; alt. 8800 ft.), where
the bus stopped at the church. Three little Indian children with their dog seemed to be
waiting for us there. Apparently everyone was getting tired of looking at old village
churches, though, because they all groaned and stayed on the bus. Nevertheless, this little
mid-17th century church had its place in history. It was in this church that General
Lavalle's men, no longer able to endure the stench of his decomposing body, stopped to
perform the macabre task of removing the rotting flesh from his bones. Ugh! They then
escaped to Bolivia with his skeleton. Like most of Argentina's heroes, he was eventually
buried in the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.
Just outside the village was the Tropic of Capricorn monument. The bus stopped
so we could take pictures. It then stopped at Tilcara again where we visited the
archeological museum. Finally we drove on through the mountains to San Salvador de
Jujuy (pop. 130,000; alt. 4100 ft.).
We parked at the pleasant main plaza and visited Government House, a beautiful old building. The tour, however, focused on one artifact, a replica of the original Argentine flag designed by General Belgrano, himself. (It bore no resemblance to the current flag.) Next we visited the cathedral, with its ornate 17th century wooden pulpit, said to be the most important piece of colonial baroque in Argentina.
We then were given thirty minutes of free time, not enough to go very far by foot. We walked into the commercial district, but the stores weren't particularly interesting. We stopped and got some bottled water at a cafe, then headed back to meet our bus in front of the Town Hall. Outside the building were four large marble statues carved around 1910 by one of Argentina's best known sculptors, Lola Mora. (Our guide never mentioned them.) She is most renowned for the Fountain of the Nereids in Buenos Aires, based on the fountain of the same name in Rome, where she studied. The bus made no more stops. However, it left the main highway north of Salta and wound slowly through a thick mountain forest, as the guide lectured about the different kinds of trees (even after it was too dark to see them). It was 8:30 by the time we got back to the Plaza 9 de Julio in Salta. The trip had been very interesting, but fourteen hours was a bit much. The heat and the sun really sapped our energy. We rested in our room for a while, then went out for a pizza just a couple of doors from the hotel. We were in bed by eleven, dreading having to get up early again the next morning. Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
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