Humahuaca

Local legend has it that Mark James and B.J. Thomas got inspiration for the Blue Swede smash hit, Hooked on a Feeling, while adventuring in this town. They just changed the sound from Humahuaca [u-ma-wa-ka] to Ooga-Chaka. A downgrade for sure, but that’s what you get with out of touch record labels.

It was a 4:30 bus that took us to this quebrada town. The region, Quebrada de Humahuaca, is a long valley with the dry Rio Grande riverbed winding through the middle, flanked on either side by multicolored mountain landscape. The scenery made the bus journey up really wonderful, especially once we entered the Quebrada.

We came up for one reason, Quebrada de Hornocal, or in tourist speak, the 14 colours mountain. This was one valley over, over some shallow hills. We gave ourselves the morning to find an afternoon or evening tour, as it was not walkable, and then we would depart in the morning the next day.

As soon as we got off the bus, we got swarmed by tour offers for Hornocal. We picked the pushiest, and got ourselves sorted out for a 5:30 evening tour. Easy. We then walked over to the bus ticket counter, and booked our bus home. 11:20AM. Easy. With errands immediately out of the way, we could explore the town.

We picked up breakfast from a side of the road grilled tortilla lady. They were filled with cheese and salami. It was a really nice breakfast, and they were surprisingly filling.

The town is very clearly a domestic tourist destination. Lots of Argentine tourists in the area, browsing all of the Inca and Andean themed market stalls and souvenirs. There were not a lot of gringo’s like us exploring. Humahuaca is also a hotspot for motorbike tourism. An older British (we presume) group was passing through the day that we were there.

We had lunch at a random café, finally discovering what Chicken Neapolitan is. Its breaded chicken with ham, cheese and egg on top. Way more food than we bargained for, but it was decent. The empanada’s and the mint lemonade were great though. That combo is a classic that we are bringing home.

We spent the afternoon actually exploring the town. We checked out the iconic victory monument. It was iconic. We checked out the archeological museum. It had artifacts. We checked out the music museum. It was closed. Fresh out of tourist hotspots, we hung out in the main square instead, listening to jewelry artisans play their flutes. Then it began to rain.

So, this one’s kind of on us, but I’m going to make excuses anyway. At least once a week for the past two months the forecast has said it was going to rain wherever we were at the time, and it just didn’t. Didn’t even look close. We began to not trust South American weather reports. I guess Argentina is different, or a broken clock is right twice a day. But the afternoon thunderstorm that was promised came. And it came with fury.

We holed up in our lunchtime café. It was about 3:00. A few street dogs joined us, including a rambunctious and horny mini Goldendoodle. That psycho provided the afternoon entertainment. How long is this rainstorm going to last? Probably not 2.5 hours. Our tour will be fine.

It lasted five. We had to reschedule our tour to the morning, and due to already booking the bus, it had to be a more expensive, earlier private tour (The rest of the buses to Salta were full). Oh well.

We made it to our hostel during a period of light rain. We could then see the damage the rainstorm had done. The streets were literal streams, with water rushing down them sidewalk to sidewalk. The normally quiet Rio Grande was thundering orange silty water down its banks. Our hostel was mostly unscathed. We were sleeping in the garden in our tent, but thankfully, our tent was under a tin roof.

The hostel was quite lovely. The appearance was a bit dodgy, one main living area, no reception, and the garden in the back, but the community there was fantastic. We think that this is a place that tends to get visitors for a couple of weeks. We were invited to eat dinner with the other patrons, again mostly Argentine, and they made us a big pasta dinner! There was a bit of a language barrier, but we had a decent Spanish conversation with a Columbian graffiti and tattoo artists. When we told them we were leaving the next day, they were all quite sad. It was a lovely evening of existence, and motivation to learn even more Spanish.

Finally, the next morning, we could go on our tour. Our guide picked us up form the hostel, and began a 40 minute dirt road drive over the hills to the next Quebrada. We were the first ones to arrive, and it was really nice to have the area to ourselves. It was a short walk to the better lookout point, but there we could see all 14 colours.

A small negative about going this early in the morning is that there is cloud cover. Without direct sun, the colours on the mountain become a bit muted. As a result, the pictures don’t do this landscape justice. The reds, whites, greens and everything else melt together so beautifully.

We got some tortillas from the tortilla ladies for the bus, and rode 6 hours back to Salta. This bus stopped at every town it felt like, and got hung up on construction. It was a long day, but that’s ok. We got what we were going for. There was no mention of the Blue Suede gang anywhere in down. I guess they keep it hush-hush.

That’s it for mountains for a bit! We’re off to the centre of Argentina next, for some city living! See you there!