Experience the best of Tilcara

Tilcara lies at about 2,460 metres in the Quebrada de Humahuaca, the long Andean valley in Jujuy province that UNESCO has listed as a World Heritage cultural landscape. Low adobe houses, a small plaza and craft stalls make up the centre, set below bare, banded mountains in shades of red, ochre and green.

Just south of town, the Pucará de Tilcara, a partly reconstructed pre-Inca hill fortress, looks over the valley. The Garganta del Diablo, a narrow gorge with a waterfall, is a walk up a side valley, and the road south passes Purmamarca and its Hill of Seven Colours. A road from Purmamarca climbs to the Salinas Grandes salt flats at more than 3,000 metres.

Andean cooking here uses llama meat, quinoa, corn and many kinds of potato, in dishes such as humita, locro and empanadas. Coca-leaf tea, offered at most tables, is the usual answer to the altitude, and the days stay dry and bright for most of the year, chilly after dark.