Andean Northwest Region Guide

The Andean Northwest is the oldest-settled and most indigenous part of Argentina, and it looks nothing like the rest of the country.

The Quebrada de Humahuaca is a desert canyon that has been a trade route for ten thousand years, running north toward Bolivia past villages of adobe and cactus-wood churches. Above Purmamarca the rock is banded in seven colours; above Humahuaca the Hornocal ridge is a zigzag of fourteen. It is UNESCO-listed as a cultural landscape.

West of it, the altiplano climbs past 4,000 metres to the Salinas Grandes, a salt flat under an enormous sky.

Salta is the region’s colonial city, and south of it the Calchaqui valleys run through red rock to Cafayate, where Torrontes vines grow at 1,700 metres and produce a wine made nowhere else.

The Quebrada de Humahuaca

Drive or bus north from Jujuy through the canyon: Purmamarca beneath its banded hill, Tilcara with a reconstructed pre-Inca pucara fortress above it, and Humahuaca, from where a rough road climbs to the Hornocal viewpoint over a ridge of fourteen colours.

The altiplano

Over the Lipan pass at 4,170 metres to the Salinas Grandes, a salt flat of 12,000 hectares where the horizon disappears. Further out, the puna proper: flamingo lagoons, vicuna, and the extraordinary emptiness around Susques and the Salar de Olaroz.

Salta and the Calchaqui valleys

Salta for its colonial centre and the MAAM museum, which holds three Inca children found frozen at 6,700 metres on Llullaillaco — a genuinely sobering display. Then the Cuesta del Obispo and the cactus forest of Los Cardones down to Cachi, and the long red-rock drive through the Quebrada de las Conchas to Cafayate.

Wine

Cafayate’s bodegas, which grow Torrontes at some of the highest altitudes in the world.

Ruins

Quilmes, a large pre-Hispanic settlement built into a hillside, and the Inca road that runs through the whole region.

The northwest is the part of Argentina where the indigenous inheritance is unmistakable, which is unusual in a country that has largely told itself otherwise.

Andean rather than European

Argentina’s self-image is of a European immigrant nation, and it is broadly accurate in Buenos Aires and the pampas. Here it is not. The northwest was the most densely settled part of the territory before the Spanish, was part of the Inca empire, and was administered from Peru rather than from the Atlantic for two centuries. The faces, the food, the music and the religion all reflect it.

Kolla and Diaguita

The Kolla in Jujuy and the Diaguita-Calchaqui further south are the recognised peoples, and their communities hold collective land title in parts of the Quebrada and the puna. Quechua and Aymara vocabulary runs through the local Spanish.

Pachamama

The earth deity is genuinely venerated. Before drinking, a first splash goes on the ground; on 1 August whole communities dig a hole and feed the earth. It coexists with Catholicism without apparent difficulty.

Music

The charango and the panpipes belong here rather than to the tango south, and the zamba and chacarera are the regional dances.

This is Kolla and Diaguita country, and the communities of the Quebrada run much of the tourism themselves. Buy textiles and ceramics directly in the village markets rather than in Salta’s shops, and ask before photographing people — particularly at ceremonies.

Lithium is the live issue. The salt flats sit on some of the world’s largest lithium reserves, extraction uses enormous quantities of water in a desert, and indigenous communities around Salinas Grandes have protested for years that they were not properly consulted. You will see the signs. It is worth understanding rather than photographing as scenery.

Altitude means the environment recovers slowly. Stay on tracks, and do not drive off-road on the altiplano.

Water is scarce throughout; the puna receives almost none.

Coca leaf is legal and traditional here and is not a drug tourism opportunity.

April to November is the dry season and the best time: clear skies, warm days, cold nights, and the mountain roads open. This is when to come.

December to March is the wet season — the invierno boliviano — with heavy afternoon rain, landslides closing the Quebrada road, and the salt flats sometimes under water, which is beautiful and makes them impassable.

February brings Carnival, which in the Quebrada is genuinely distinctive: a devil is dug up from the earth to start it and buried again to end it, and the villages of Tilcara and Humahuaca fill.

1 August is Pachamama day, when offerings are made to the earth — food, drink and coca buried in a hole — observed across the region and the most important date in the indigenous calendar.

Holy Week fills Salta, and the Cafayate harvest falls in February and March.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

This is genuinely inexpensive by Argentine standards, and the region offers better value than anywhere else in the country.