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.