Quebrada de Humahuaca

I'm too lazy to re-order my photos. When you upload them onto blogger it puts the new ones at the top; basically the photos from the beginning of the day are going to be at the end of this post.

We ended the day (day after Purmamarca) in San Salvador de Jujuy inside the justice building in the flag room learning about the flag of Argentina, and some other really old flag that General Belgrano (important in the Argentine war of Independence) made and gave to the province (I think? It was in Spanish and I wasn't listening that closely).

I do remember that the face of the sun is Incan-inspired; the straight lines of the sun rays represent European influence and the wavy lines are indigenous influence (if you are Argentine and reading this, correct me if I'm wrong).

View from the Plaza of San Salvador de Jujuy- looking at justice building.




Some nice scenery (on the way to Jujuy)- our tour guide Juan and Marie (Marie and her husband traveled with us the second day).

Along the highways they have tolls and different check-points; sometimes you get pulled-over and sometimes you don't. This time we did; I'm pretty sure Juan is passing 10 pesos to the guy under his license (to avoid some kind of ticket). I had to do the touristy thing and snap a photo.



This is Humahuaca. It was a very important stopping point when travelers went from Buenos Aires to the Spanish Viceroy in Peru. The tour guide explained that there were other routes they could have taken but this was the easiest because it wasn't as high in altitude as the other route (the animals carting everyone around could find stuff to eat). There was a third route they could have taken (can't remember where) but it was more jungle and was dangerous because of pumas and venomous bugs and mosquito's and so on.


This is a monument to Argentina's independence.



View of the city:


Pucará de Tilcara (fortress of Tilcara)

We stopped along the Quebrada de Humahuaca (gorge of Humahuaca) at the Pucará de Tilcara (I think Pucará is a Quechua word signifying fortress).


These buildings/ruins were re-built in the 1950's (I think with the materials from the original ruins that date back to the 15th century). Before the Spanish brought adobe bricks to South America, they used stone- like with these buildings. The roofs were made out of mud and madera de cardón (wood from them big cactuses you see in the background).



Along with homes, there were corrals (for llamas) and agricultural fields and so forth.




I wish I had written this a week ago when I remembered more.