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Jan. 24, 2007 Yesterday, I went with a party of four and a guide northwards along Argentina ’s National Route #9, which follows the Río Grande through the Quebrada de Humahuaca, in the province of Jujuy . We passed through several Indian towns and villages, all nestled at 8,000 to 10,000 feet in the Cordillera Oriental of the Andes Mountains. The quebrada is the basin of the river, carved among towering peaks and cliffs, and is famous for its multicoloured ravines and canyons. After crossing the Tropic of Capricorn, we made our first stop at a town called Purmamarca. In order to get there we had to drive several miles on a tortuous, steep dirt road through the rock formations, which vary from the color of face powder to the color of cantaloupe pulp. We arrived in town just as the bells in the local church were tolling noon, and the plaza opposite was full of tourists. These were all Argentines; I heard no English, German or French. The plaza was a marketplace for handcrafted goods: jewelry, beads, textiles, leather and carvings, all made by the local Indians. These Indians are a mixture of
several tribes: Aymaras, Quechuas, Coyas, Jujuyes, Purmamarcas and Yavis. Thousands of miles away though Purmamarca may be from New Mexico , it is very reminiscent of some of the pueblos, like Acoma, Ysleta and Taos , that I visited as a child. An Indian is an Indian is an Indian! I bought some hand-woven fillets to make into headbands, but I can’t be acquiring a lot of baggage, so I had to restrain myself somewhat. Our next stop was the town of
Humahuaca (pronounced approximately Oomawocka), very similar in most regards to Purmamarca. However, there’s a monument to the Heroes of Argentine Independence, set upon an eminence whose elevation is exactly 3000 meters (9843 feet), which is the highest point we reached, though the mountains all about stand thousands of feet higher. But this is not the highest region in the Andes; that’s at Aconcagua in the province of Mendoza , which I visited last month. We saw three llamas in Humahuaca, but these were domesticated llamas provided for sightseers. We ate lunch in Humahuaca. I had roast llama, with potatoes, carrots and rice. Entertainment in the form of music and dancing was provided. They played one of the Argentine songs that I’ve known for years, and I was finally able to decipher a couple of words that had always puzzled me: a ‘coyita’ is a Coya girl, and a ‘charango’ is an Argentine lute. There was one adorable Indian girl dressed in traditional garb dancing very vivaciously with an agile youth. The quebrada has numerous stands of a cactus called pasacana (Trichocereus pasacana), that looks for all the world like saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea), at least from a distance. Looking closer though, you see that pasacana has acicular spines, very densely spaced, whereas saguaro has recurved spines set in neat rows. At Humahuaca, we turned back towards San Salvador de Jujuy, the provincial capital. On the roadside, a few miles out, there was a vendor’s stall. We stopped because we saw three or four little boys playing with a young llama and a lamb. One little round-faced two-year-old Indian boy was carrying around a fat, woolly lamb as big as himself, and very protectively, as if he had been named its guardian. The other boys were frolicking with a very graceful, dainty, snow-white baby llama, no bigger than a fawn or a dog, but for the long neck. Then we visited the town of Tilcara , where we spent about an hour in the plaza-marketplace. Tilcara is the site of the Pucará de Tilcara. “Pucará” is an Indian word meaning “fortress”, and you can still see the rock structure that was constructed against the incursions of the Spaniards over 200 years ago. After that, we climbed another tortuous, steep dirt road that coiled round and round a local peak, in order to see the panoramic view of Tilcara and environs afforded by the heights. Looking
down what seemed a mile, we could see the river and the ravine winding along for miles and miles below. I noticed that, near Humahuaca and the other towns that we visited, the mountains, almost bare, are big hunks of raw stone, like Gibraltar , but towards the capital, they become green. I thought it might be that we had risen over the tree line for the region, but the guide set that the lie of the land determined the passage of clouds, the greener region always being swaddled in cloud. We got back to San Salvador de Jujuy about 6 PM.
------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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