The second of our two group-sponsored trips (the first being San Antonio de Areco) was to Jujuy and truly started Wednesday night when I went out to an asado with a number of people in my group and stayed until 4am sampling different meats and learning how to prepare each one. In typical fashion I packed for Jujuy when I got home, so the weekend began when I met up with a couple friends to split an 8:10am cab after 2 hours of sleep.

Jujuy is an Argentine province in the North-West corner of the country, and like nearly every other province in Argentina it has essentially nothing in common with Buenos Aires save for the Rioplatense Spanish. It was only a two hour flight from the airport within Buenos Aires (Jorge Newbury) though I´d be surprised if more than 1/4 of the 50 people on the trip (of the 106 group members) were awake to experience it.  I certainly wasn't.  When we stumbled out of the plane onto the little Jujuy tarmac (quick trivia: is tarmac technically the area outside the airport on which planes land?  NO!...usually, since Tarmac is actually the patent name of a type of pavement--more commonly known as a blacktop.  Useful, I know.)...anyway, when we got out of the airport we had four small buses waiting for us: three bland white ones and one bright one with huge images of Jujuy.  I quickly got on the picturesque one which happened to have an awesome driver named Antonio and the cooler with water bottles.  From the airport in San Salvador de Jujuy it was a 2 1/2 hour ride to Tilcara, the small city outside of which our hostel was located.

The hostel was pretty cool with about 10 small red buildings within a few hundred yards of the mountains and only a stone's throw (literally) further from the city of Tilcara. 


We ate when we first got there, during which I made a key discovery of a ping-pong table on the premises...other key discoveries included ample hot water in the showers, maids that came unnecessarily frequently, and three llamas randomly chillin' in the back.  After the quick meal I headed out with my two roommates to explore the town, and within 5 minutes of reaching the town plaza I was happily wearing my own llama sweater.




The first night we dinner in the hostel restaurant, complete with chicken and fresh goat cheese. Since we were all exhausted we didn't go out on the town.



The first full day we hiked through some ruins near Tilcara that dates back to the 900s and then moved on to the 42 mile away historic town of Humahuaca.



In Humahuaca we ate lunch at La Peña de Fortunato where I sat with the staff members and practiced my Spanish for a while. After lunch we walked around the town for a couple hours. In the town was a giant statue of a man raising one hand and a couple fingers on that one hand, but it merely looked like he was trying to get a waiter's attention so I didn't think it merited a picture on the blog. That said, the following picture was taken about 10 feet from the statue's base. Literally a minute before leaving I remembered that the staff strongly suggested we buy hats to shield ourselves from the sun so I ran into the nearest store and bought the truly spectacular hat that are in a number of the later photos.



After Humahuaca we drove back to the hostel for a laid back night...which we took to mean a night on the town. My roommates and I took (legally) a few bikes from the hostel to explore the town a bit, after which we returned and walked with a number of people into town for dinner. Since we'd gotten back at around 5:30pm and walked into Tilcara around 7:30, every restaurant was closed. One of the CIEE staff members recommended a particular restaurant to me so while waiting for it to open, I went with about 10 people to a choripan stand across the street for appetizers.

The restaurant itself was called El Puesto and is renown in the tiny town of Tilcara (alliteration, anyone?) for its--what else in Jujuy--llama.




Since I know you're wondering, llama tastes like a more flavorful version of turkey, and in this case arrived in a sweet orange sauce with potatoes on the side. Ironically I discovered today that my friends and I ate so much llama while at El Puesto that when the coordinators (who didn't, unlike us, go at the obnoxious American dinner time) arrived at El Puesto they were forced to order fish.

Day three we left bright and early to drive a couple hours to La Salina Grandes, or the large salt flat. 5000 square kilometers of salt with an absurdly large line in front of a tourist pay-to-enter porta-potty...truly an amazing sight to see. Additionally we were about 5000 meters above sea level. The salt flat is barren save for a few huge trucks leaving behind black smoke and a few holes and piles (of salt) in what is otherwise the epitome of nature. While there we snapped a number of (admittedly cliche) pictures on the flats and hacked at the salt a few times with ice picks. And on the way we ran into a number of vacunas.







we returned to Tilcara, but on the way back stopped in Purmamarca (yes, with an "r"--I misspelled it by accident--though I still maintain it's better when it translates to "Puma Brand") for lunch at Claudia Vilte, a hike through a few of the mountains, and some last minute shopping for llama gear. At lunch a folkloric group performed for us, as in Humahuaca, but in this case was noticable because out of nowhere the guitarist was wearing the ridiculous hat I'd bought.



This area is well-known for its seven-colored mountain, and while I didn't count colors the variety of colors was certainly noticable and were much brighter than I'd anticipated. We also stumbled upon a soccer field during our hike where a number of the townspeople were gathered either watching or playing in the game which was a really cultural thing to witness.







We flew back here to Buenos Aires the next morning which was a serious reality check as I have two midterms due shortly. Fortunately I have the writing of this blog post as another escape from reality.

...until now.