Polly from the block

I spent most of my week in Jujuy on the same block. It housed my hotel, cafe and the hessian health shop and a further favourite 2 places.

The first, Restaurante Tia, was for lunch. An enterprising family had taken over a crumbling city mansion, complete with beautifully tiled floor and sweeping staircase. In one small corner of a vast room there was a little buffet with hot food and cold, including several regional specialities, and a disorderly queue of hungry workers. I tried kube, a savoury cake made from wheat and minced meat. But there was also great lumps of meat and chicken and even fish in batter. By 1.30pm the metal trays were almost empty - you had to move fast if you wanted to eat at Restaurante Tia. Once you´d pointed at what you wanted you were sent upstairs to a rabbit warren of low-ceilinged rooms, barely furnished with wobbly tables and mis-matching chairs. With no ceremony or pretty features eating was a fast and silent business with diners hunched over their laden plates. It was very cheap - £2 - and though not really cheerful I liked the hard-working family and their little business. One day as I came down the stairs a man emerged from the curtained box they´d made into the kitchen and asked me if I´d enjoyed my stir-fried chicken. `Mmmm´ I said sensing something, ´who cooked it? You?´ Yes he replied grinning from ear to ear.

The second place was for evenings. It was a 24 hour shop, a long narrow space with an endless counter, behind which were neatly stacked shelves of wine and floor cleaner, hot sauce and boot polish - all kinds of stuff - but it also had a dining room out back and served a strange range of hot food. Empanadas and tarts and baked chicken and nasty dishes of boiled vegetables. The shop was run by a group of jolly women who spent their time huddled together at one end of the place, gossiping and roaring with laughter. They didn´t seem like shop workers at all, more like a bunch of Bohemian friends - actors or theatrical folk. My favourite was a real glam puss in a blowsy kind of way. I admired her work outfit of vertiginous heels and tight leopardskin. I was very happy perched on a stool by the tv with a piece of spinach pie and a cold beer.

Also on the block were a old-fashioned hotel with garish oil paintings in the lobby, some kind of college with students dressed in smart black and white uniforms pouring out at dusk and, best of all, a strange Museum of Sacred Art which was no such thing. It was actually a reproduction studio where teams of young locals churned out little woodem plaques painted with the famous Warrior Archangels or well-known images of the Virgin and Saints. `Who buys these?´ I asked the young girl who showed me round. She couldn´t tell me. Very odd. But so, then, was Jujuy.

Next door

Next door to my hotel, however, was an excellent cafe, Cafe Humano, with delicious coffee, served as it should be with a glass of chilled soda water, so every morning I went there for breakfast part 2. It was tiny with only a handful of wobbly tables but oddly classy. Odd because Jujuy wasn't in the least bit chic. There was a magazine rack, books and cds lined up along the walls and pleasant lighting. It was like being in Brighton 20 years ago. The cafe con leche came in pretty earthenware mugs and there was Wifi and rock on the radio (nothing makes a better accompaniment to writing than Bryan Adam warbling "Every thing I do I do it for you" or that Welsh woman with lots of hair or U2 - if the book's terrible I've got my reasons) so there I spent most of my days.

I learned a lot about the life of the cafe if not Jujuy. Sorry Freddie ("But Polly what do you know about Jesus Maria?" As it turns out much more than I ever discovered about Jujuy). There were few customers - me mainly, various groups of friends dropping by and the odd posh pair of groomed women, professional men or students - and I couldn't understand how the business made any money. It was run by three entirely different men. One was a middle-aged dark skinned man with floppy black hair who spent most mornings delivering coffees and sandwiches on a tray. He was very calm and smiley. The second was a handsome youth with a rock 'n' roll look and a scooter who made the coffees but mostly sat in front of a computer. The third had a worried expression and worked in the evenings with the breakfast delivery man while the youth left at lunchtime and just popped in at night. What was going on?

One day I found out - someone came in and asked me if this was the place where they lent money? Umm? I replied. But it was. The money lending had something to do with the boy and his computer - details were punched in and cash handed out - but I never really knew how the system worked or why or how. Where did the cash come from? How did people know where to come? The business was obviously under the table but also out in the open. Hmm.

Anyway the cafe also allegedly sold the CDs and books lined up all its walls but I never saw a sale. On my last night in the city, by which time I and the men were firm friends, I drank a load of wine - bought in just for me - and the third man, the worried one, wished me well, kissed me goodbye and as I was heading for the door thrust something into my hand - a little embroidered purse made by his aunt (the cafe's latest legit money-making venture). A present for a very good customer though he didn't say it - he just looked anxious and sad that I was leaving though we had not exchanged one word of conversation. I felt the same way.

Hotel notel

There were few hotels in Jujuy - tricky if you're a tourist. I liked the idea of the pink tower block by the bus station. The front desk was manned by a woman with no left eye while her husband had no right one - perhaps there is always someone for everyone. They were an odd couple, eccentrically dressed but both friendly and funny, laughing uproariously at everything I said. "We don't have any single rooms, dearie" said she. "You need a husband" said he. Actually they showed me a room and I didn't, at the time, have the heart for strip lighting and strange commercial travellers haunting the stairwells.

I didn't really fancy the only hostel in town either even though the owner was another attractive Argentine man. He was very smooth, whisking me down the corridor to see a room and ensuring me that nothing would be too much trouble. But the pool on the roof was out of action because it was almost winter (mmm, not by British standards - it was hot most days) and the non dormitory rooms were mouldy and sad. No.

But I did find a great place - Casa de la Barra, a hostel in an old house with large attractive rooms, a brilliant bathroom with a huge marble sink and enormous bath and a double bed in the only room for one person. Bloody hell, my first in 2 months - I was longing to sleep in something wider than my waist and so there I stayed. Just me mostly. I revelled in the luxury of bedside lamps, proper sheets and a mattress that wasn't a) a thin sheet of foam and b) didn't sink in the middle.

There was a downpoint. I had to go across the road to a health food bakery for a frankly disgusting healthy breakfast. No coffee because, the wispy girl at the hotel told me, it's a stimulant (isn't that the point?) but a milky drink called malta (hot chocolate without the chocolate - pointless) and a basket of weird stodgy biscuits. Yuck.And the lunchtime menu was revolting sounding - oat soup followed by soya cutlets and a side order of spaghetti. I was amazed that in such an unworldy place like Jujuy there was a market for brown bread and vegetarian food. But actually, each morning while I pushed the strange food away from me, a queue was forming at the counter. Fittingly, I suppose, it was a Seventies kind of healthy - hessian and wholesomeness - which went well with Jujuy's old-fashioned atmosphere.

San Salvador de Jujuy

Jujuy, capital city of the province of Jujuy, is another place I went to in Argentina that no-one recommends. Most tourists pass through, on their way to Humahuaca and further north to the famous sign at La Quiaca on the border with Bolivia which states that the distance between the country's northernmost point and the Ushuaia in the far south is 5,800 km (I'd travelled almost 5000 of those) and onwards and up, into the high Andes and beyond.

"It's not an attractive place, nothing to see, Polly", Maxi had said in Jesus Maria and I suppose he was right. It's a tiny city - not even a large town really with a handful of crowded central streets and one lovely square. I never worked out why the streets were always so crowded - what for? where was everyone going? - or what anyone was doing in Jujuy. The bus station, a short walk from the town centre and its chaotic sprawl, the little kiosks selling hot dogs and fizzy drinks, the stalls flogging knock-off dvds and all kinds of plastic crap was as exciting as it got in the city. But I liked its nostalgic neon-lit signs and its dusty stores, the roads bleeding out into the countryside, green hills rising and the river running through. No-one bothered me, no-one seemed startled or surprised by my presence. I was left alone and there were few distractions.

Best drinking spot in the world

I think I may have found the best place ever to have a cold beer on a hot afternoon. In Tilcara, heading into the town centre from the bus station, should you ever find yourself there.

It takes the form of a large and beautiful shady tree (called a Molle, the 'barman' told me. It had aromatic leaves, used to make a tea for churing stomachs) in the dustiest of streets with a couple of stools lined up at the window of a small kiosk and a wobbly tin table. Heaven.

El Pukara del Tilcara

I hadn't finished with La Quebrada completely. I wanted to visit some of the other places in the area and decided to spend a day in Tilcara on my way from Humahuaca to the capital city of the province, Jujuy.

Tilcara is a much smaller place than Humahuaca, stretched along two streets and a square. I left my suitcase with an old man at the tiny bus station who also ran a little kiosk and made me a delicious freshly squeezed orange juice. "Be back before 9pm" he shouted, banging his glass window as I set off.

I was on my way to El Pukara de Tilcara (another great name), the strange ancient fortress on the edge of town. On the way I noticed that Tilcara is much ritzier than Humahuaca - it has several tiny shopping centres, chic little shops with wooden facades and expensive local craft offerings - like New Mexico I decided (though I've never been there). There's a tea room and a spa hotel with swanky cacti and stone architecture and hippies playing guitars on the roof of a hostel. WiFi (my new mark of civilisation) and glamorous bars with proper coffee, cocktails and beautiful staff. Clearly the place has lots of refugees from Buenos Aires and other more frenetic parts of Argentina. Mmm. I was glad I'd stayed in Humahuaca.

The Pukara is an impressive place, a hill covered in stone houses and temples and wandering paths lined by cacti. From its top, marred by a strange new pyramid construction built to honor the anthropologists who worked on the site (not very successfully since still, no-one really knows much about it - except that it was built during the Inca reign in a place important for its strategic position between the highlands and the valley floor) the view out over the gorge is spectacular. The Pukara, said the useful notice in the town centre, was the most primitive of indigenous fortresses but the best, "bold bastion of the Spanish conquest". And Tilcara was home to Viltipoco, the bravest warrior among warrior peoples, who resisted for many years the Spanish conquistadores, desperate to seize the town so that they could rest on their long journey to the gold and silver treasures of highland Bolivia and Peru. All very romantic.

It was an attractive place, a village really. The large church was closed when I went but there was a gold Christ on the cross outside it, gleaming in the sunshine and dressed in his little skirt - which seems to be the way in this area of the country. The town's museum had the usual collection of broken pots (does anyone find these interesting?) but also a room dedicated to the indigenous Arawak people of Tartagal in northern Salta (the neighbouring province which encloses tiny Jujuy like a claw) who dress in extravagant animal masks and dance a wild chanting dance at night, called the Pim Pim. I was beginning to think that there was nothing that didn't happen in Argentina. There was a post office adorned with cacti - brilliant - and several little dives to eat in. There were vertiginous streets and dusty coloured houses. All very pretty.

El Preferido de Polly

I loved Argentina. And in Argentina, with a helluva lot of competition - endless, seemingly - the place I loved the most was Humahuaca. I loved the little town with its abandoned railway tracks and its straggling market. Its river and cacti and mud houses. I loved the tasty food - not just slabs of meat but spicy stews, delicious yellow potatoes and the best empanadas I'd eaten in Argentina (from the woman on the corner by the market in the mornings, rushed from her own kitchen, warm from the oven. She came out again in the evenings with huge rough slabs of home-made bread). I loved my simple hotel - Hotel Saltenita, £5 a night and immaculately clean - even though I had a tiny bed and the walls were a bilious green. I loved the pink cheeked coffee woman at the station and the dramatic bus ride to Iruja. I liked the simple churches and their gold interiors. I loved the name Humahuaca and kept saying it, as much as I could.

Best of all I loved the climate. Every day the coolness of the night disappeared with the sun and every day the sky was bright blue and cloudless. It was always warm and the heat was dry with no humidity. Truly una delicia. Delicious. Every evening the rocks of the gorge walls turned red in the dusk and the clear sky changed from turquoise to a deep navy blue, strewn with thousands of glittery stars. I've never seen night skies as beautiful.

I chatted to a chatty woman selling woolly hats in the market one morning. She caught me gazing at the sky, marvelling again at its amazing colour and light. "Is it really like this every day?" I asked her. "Yes, every day" she said, smiling, "isn't it lovely? But ah, have you seen the stars at night?"

Uquia

The owner of my hotel, Elsa and I went to the fiestas patronales of a town further along the gorge. Bugger Sixto and his bloody closed museum, I was going to discover a little living regional folklore by myself.
Right by the side of the main road is tiny Uquia – again, like the other gorge settlements, it had a lovely church and narrow dirt streets winding uphill to the wall of coloured rock above. The church was even prettier than Iruja’s with the same precious angel warriors – the Angeles Archabuceros (angels with arms) - and a Baroque gilded altarpiece, made in the Kingdom of Potosi in Bolivia. A church built in 1691, said the useful notice, with an interior whose decorative wealth contrasts with the simplicity of the facade.
Uquia’s main street was crammed with stalls selling an eclectic assortment of goods – fruit, second-hand clothes, woolly socks, bags, empanadas, cds and tapes. Under a large awning at the top of the hill there was an old table-football game with metal players and a row of hastily assembled diners with grilled chicken and lamb – they were all full with people shovelling in food in time to race down to the main square to watch the procession.
The parade was as colourful and kitsch as anything I’d seen. First to march down the hill and through the square were musicians in lime green berets with white bobbles, playing drums and long sets of pan pipes which they thrust at each other like weapons. Then came musicians in similar berets but red - both bands trying to outdo the other in cacophonous noise. The churches' saints were carried past decked in plastic flowers in lurid shades and the poor saps who had been given the privilege of hoisting the glass boxes then lined up in the blistering heat while the town priest exhorted us all ito join in an interminable religious sing-song. God it went on and on. I was about to leave when the priest announced the final treat, a desfile (parade) of gauchos. I was desperate to see this - I really hadn't seen any gauchos in Argentina, much to my huge huge disappointment.

In the bright midday they came/roaring past/Cowboys on horses/raising whorls of dust. The earth thudded beneath our feet and we all breathed in. Not only were the riders dressed in all the paraphenalia of the gaucho with studded belts, cravats and starched shirts. Not only were there women in flamenco dresses, fierce female warriors and children squeezed on board. Not only were they carrying huge Argentine flags and other standards. Not only were they even more glamorous than I'd imagined with black hair flowing and proud faces. As they raced through the square, much to my amazement, each group skidded perfectly to a halt in front of the church and raised their hats to the holy saints and then galloped away, one hand on the reins, the other flourishing their headgear at the cheering crowds. I couldn't make a sound/my jaw had fallen to the ground.

I walked the 10km home - it was my final evening in the gorge, the gorgeous gorge, the break in the desert, La Quebrada de Humahuaca de Jujuy and the sun had cooled to a perfect temperature. I wanted to gaze properly at the walls of coloured rocks above and the blue ribbon of the Rio Grande below. I didn't want to leave.

No culture

I didn’t make it to the archaeological museum – it always seemed to be closed. The town’s other museum – of regional folklore - was a very odd place. In the window was a jumbled collection of small books, all by the same man, the magnificently named Sixto Vazquez Zuleta Toqo. In spite of claiming to be open every day it also was usually closed. I rang the bell every time I passed but nothing. One evening I succeeded in getting a response – the door was opened reluctantly by a little old man in a woolly llama jumper. It was clear that this was his home, that he was the author of all the books and that this museum was his personal collection of ephemera – however I never saw any of it. We stood awkwardly in the dusty hall, a glass cabinet piled high with bits of scrumpled paper. It was too late he said to show me round now. And the cost of the ‘tour’ was 20 US dollars. A lot of money in Humahuaca. Still I held on – I’ll come back tomorrow I said. But he wouldn’t answer his door the next day though I knocked and rang and knocked at it. I wanted to see his strange collection of folklore and hear his stories of ancient rituals and carnival rites – the little angel wake, the bull covered in explosives. He was, he proudly announced in notices all over his windows and door, a Humahuaqueno, an etnologist, an expert on the culture of the Quebrada de Humahuaca. Who better to drag information out of? But no joy.
I did though, climb the steps in the thin evening air to Humahuaca’s monument to Independence. In the form of a leaping man, it hangs dramatically above the town centre – the centrepiece of many tourist snaps. And I read the useful notice (there’s one in EVERY site of historical interest in Argentina – AO, Argentina Organisada yet again) in the main square which made sense of everything. Aha! Humahuaca was once home to 300 native tribes who “received the influence of the Upper Peru (Bolivia), Cusco and Tiahuanaca cultures”. So effectively my insistence that Humahuaca is more Bolivian than Argentine was in fact correct. And the notice also claimed that the townsfolk are still attached to deeply ingrained ancient Inca traditions. Aha even more.