Gateway to the Altiplano

Jujuy is Argentina's smallest, poorest, northernmost province, and feels a lot less like the rest of the country and more like what I expect Bolivia to be. Fitting, since I'm sitting in Tilcara, about 60 miles from the border, on my way north later today. The drive from Salta took me out of lush green valleys capped with low clouds and rain all morning suddenly up into brilliant sunshine and dry desert vegetation including lots of cacti, and then into the Quebrada de Humuhuaca, huge multicolored canyon formations that are a designated UN World Heritage Site, a fact that the locals make much of on roadside signs and storefronts declaring the region "El Patriomonio de la Humanidad." We're at 2500 meters or so here, and I can feel the difference.

Arrived in dusty but delightful Tilcara at 2 PM, hoofed it through the narrow windy streets up to a beautiful hilltop hostel to drop my bag, then back down and out of town to the Pre-Colombian fortress complex known as La Pukará, partially reconstructed in the past 50 years by U. Bs. As. archeologists, but still eerie and silent with the wind making strange noises blowing through the cactus spines and no one else around and me sitting alone in the shade of a bi stone wall trying to imagine what life was like here on this hilltop 5,000 years ago.

What else? Ate my first llama steak (photo here) last night, heard some great local folk music, and bought my final Argentine bus ticket bound for the border later today... stay tuned for more from Bolivia tomorrow!