Virtually Bolivia

If I thought Jujuy was a different kind of Argentina, Humahuaca was a different country altogether. Everything about it reminded me of Bolivia – the dark skinned women with long black plaited hair, wide hats and pleated skirts; the tiny dark shops with goods piled up in sacks; the thin air and the bright blue sky; the little market and the mud houses; the strange video gaming places full of boys shooting the enemy or racing cars; the basic beer joints for men only lined along the old railway track.. I spent my first days asking everyone where they came from (not popular) – I couldn’t believe that the locals weren’t Bolivian. How could they be the same nation as the sleek sexy Portenos or the hairy Eskimo Fueguinos or the cowboys of Cordoba? Even my hotel was just like a place I stayed in on the shores of Lake Titicaca almost twenty years ago. It had basic rooms on two floors round a courtyard which was taken up by a large battered station wagon. Mine had a single bed squeezed against the wall, a little table covered in a plastic tablecloth with pink checks and yellow flowers – again! Bolivian! - and a bare light bulb dangling from the low ceiling but it was immaculately clean and very cheap. I was the only guest and though I wandered round the town and peered into half a dozen more hotels, mine was the one I liked the best.