a painted valley in the sun

relaxing on the sumptuous bedding
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we decided that we needed to stay somewhere fancy befor we left argentina, seeing as it is a civilised stylish country and yet quite cheap for us ingleses.  we chose Hosteria rincon de fuego as it had nice piccies on its website (and we wanted to come to Tilcara anyway).  we weren´t dissapointed, the bedding was sumptious as promised, there was a log fire in our room which was a surprise and the decor was quite a lot like i´d have my house, if i had one and if i didn´t have quite so much clutter to fit into it).  see the photos of us relaxing. Only dissapointment was that the food was not that exciting.  However, we did find a nice place down the road where i had llama carpaccio followed by pork stuffed with prunes and a liitle patty of cheese and nuts and spring onions on the side with a yummy gravy - possibly the nicest meal i´ve had in argentina.  i can´´t remember the name but it is on the main street and is attached to a gift shop and hotel.

enjoying the luxury
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Tilcara is in Quebrada de Humuhuaca - a valley that leads from Jujuy to the argentinian altiplano.  It hardly ever rains and is hot in the day and very cold at night this means you have the best of both worlds - shorts in the day and a log fire at night.  The valley is most famous for the extraordinary colours of the rocks - red, yellow, purple, green and many shades in between. my point and click camera cannot capture the subtle stripes very well but i have tried, see photos.  In tilcara itself we went to the pre colombian fortress - the pukara.  it is partly restored and partly over-run with giant cactuses and a very nice place for wandering in the sun.  the 80p entrance ticket also entitles you to visit the museum in the village where they have a mummy where you can see the eyelashes!!-bargain.  also did quite a lot of shopping, i bought a nice llama shaped bag (see photo) and very soft llama wool hat.  they are quite keen on llamas around here.

oyster shells
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ourovely time in tilcara was slightly marred by a continuation of te car saga.  alex, being a boy and therefore attuned to these things, noticed there was a liquid leaking from te back of the car.  turns out is was the transmission fluid and we thought we had better get it fixed as our next leg was driving over the andes at 4000 plus m altitude and we didn´t want to get stuck up there with no back wheel steering.  so here we are in San salvador de Jujuy the capital of the province waiting for it to be done.  we have been here 2 days.  the annoying thing is if our spanish had been better we could have been away 2 days ago.  we went to see a mechanic man and we thought he told us to go away and he would have LOOk at it and we should come back in an hour.  what he actually said was go away and LOOK for the part and buy it.  It will take you about an hour.  this is the problem when the mechanic doesn´t have all his teeth, has a crazy accent anyway, and your spanish is more geared to asking for a bed for the night or the way to the bus station than talking about differential problems with the rear wheels.  of course when we got back after sitting around eating ice cream for an hour all the car part shops were shut as it was saturday afternoon and we had to wait for monday morning.  which it is now and alex has just come back with a fixed car so we are off to san pedro de atacama - the other side of te andes in chile.  hopefully we will make it over the pass!

giant cacti in the pukara
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By the way my rough guide is a bit mean about Jujuy town - actually it is quite nice.