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.