🇦🇷 Argentina · Norte (NOA)
Humahuaca is one of those towns that seem stopped in another time. Its narrow cobbled streets, its adobe houses with cane-and-mud roofs, its entrance halls and its cardón cacti give it the air of a colonial Andean town that wins you over the moment you arrive. It sits high in the Quebrada de Humahuaca, at almost 3,000 meters, ringed by colored mountains and bathed in the sharp light of the Jujuy altiplano. It gave its name to the whole gorge, that great natural and cultural corridor UNESCO recognized as World Heritage in 2003 for having been, for ten thousand years, a road of peoples, caravans and cultures.
But Humahuaca isn't only a postcard: it's living history. The Inca roads passed through here, as did the llama caravans linking the Puna with the valleys, the armies of the independence wars that defended the north again and again, and the Kolla culture that still beats in its people, its music, its coplas and its Carnival. Its most imposing monument, the Monument to the Heroes of Independence, recalls precisely that role of the people in the wars for freedom, when the gorge was a hot frontier between patriots and royalists.
This guide covers the essentials of Humahuaca with a practical, warm eye: what to see in the town, how to reach the dazzling Hornocal (the Hill of 14 Colors), how to combine it with Iruya, Uquía and the rest of the gorge, where to sleep and eat, and how to look after yourself at altitude ('apunamiento', or altitude sickness). Humahuaca is a quiet, deep and very photogenic destination, ideal for anyone who wants to feel the most authentic northern Argentina, far from the rush.
The name Humahuaca comes from the Omaguacas, the indigenous people who lived in this part of the gorge before the Spanish arrived, and who left their mark at archaeological sites such as the farming terraces of Coctaca. The region was under Inca rule (the Inca Road, the Qhapaq Ñan, crossed the gorge) until the conquistadors arrived in the 16th century. The town of Humahuaca established itself as an unavoidable stop on the royal road linking Upper Peru (Potosí) with the Río de la Plata, which gave it great commercial and strategic importance during the colonial period. Its church, dedicated to the Candelaria and San Antonio, dates from the 17th century (rebuilt several times). During the wars of independence, the Quebrada de Humahuaca was a key stage in the defense of the north: patriots and royalists advanced and fell back through here several times, and General Manuel Belgrano led the famous Jujuy Exodus. In tribute to that feat, in the 20th century the monumental Monument to the Heroes of Independence was built, a work by the sculptor Ernesto Soto Avendaño, inaugurated in 1950. With the recognition of the Quebrada de Humahuaca as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, the town strengthened its tourist calling without losing its Andean identity. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The northernmost province, the Andean roof of Argentina: land of the Quebrada de Humahuaca and the Inca road, of the Omaguaca pucarás, of the heroic Jujuy Exodus of 1812 and of the sugar mills, with a living Andean culture of carnival, coplas and seven-colored hills.
Read the history of Jujuy →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Every midday, in front of the Humahuaca cabildo, dozens of travelers wait with cameras ready for a mechanical saint to come out of the tower and give his blessing. Few of them know, as they applaud the automaton of San Francisco Solano or climb the steps of the monument, that they're standing on one of the oldest and most traveled roads in the Americas: a corridor that has spent some ten thousand years watching llama caravans, Inca armies, colonial muleteers bound for Potosí and soldiers of the independence wars go by. And that the town's name isn't a pretty-sounding whim: it's the living memory of its former owners.
The name Humahuaca comes from the Omaguacas (also written 'humahuacas'), the indigenous people who lived in this part of the gorge when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. They were a group of farming and herding communities with a language of their own, related to the other peoples of the valleys and gorges of what is now northwestern Argentina, who farmed in terraces, raised llamas and traded along the great natural corridor linking the Puna with the lower valleys.
The gorge that now bears their name was, for thousands of years, a road. Archaeological studies show continuous human occupation of some ten thousand years in this corridor of about 150 kilometers that follows the course of the Río Grande. Long before the Europeans, llama caravans, the peoples of the Puna and the valleys, and finally the Inca Empire, which incorporated the region into its road network, the Qhapaq Ñan or Inca Road, passed through here.
The Omaguacas, like other peoples of the area, resisted the Spanish conquest. The region was the scene of fighting during the long process of the so-called Calchaquí wars and of colonial rule over the northwest. In time, the indigenous population was subjected to the encomienda and mita systems, but their cultural mark — in language, customs, religiosity and place names — survived and still beats in the Kolla identity of the gorge.
During the colonial period, the Quebrada de Humahuaca took on enormous importance for its geographical position: it was the unavoidable passage on the Camino Real linking the Río de la Plata with Upper Peru, that is, with the fabulously rich mining center of Potosí. Everything that went up and down between Buenos Aires and Peru — goods, mules, silver, people, armies — crossed this mountain corridor, and the towns of the gorge largely lived off that traffic.
Humahuaca established itself as one of the key waystations and settlements on that road. Its church, dedicated to Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria and San Antonio, dates from the 17th century (it was rebuilt several times) and holds images and paintings of the colonial Andean tradition, such as the Cuzco school. In neighboring towns such as Uquía, churches from the same period were built, famous for their paintings of 'arquebusier angels', a fascinating testimony to the syncretism between Catholic faith and Andean worldviews.
Colonial life in the gorge combined the economy of transit with the high-altitude farming inherited from the indigenous peoples and with livestock raising. The population, mostly indigenous and mestizo, kept many of its ancestral practices under the varnish of Spanish religion and administration. That deep mixture is the root of the culture you can still breathe in Humahuaca today: adobe, cardón cactus, the copla, Carnival and devotion to the Pachamama coexist with the churches and the Catholic patron saint festivals.
The Quebrada de Humahuaca was one of the most contested stages of the Argentine wars of independence. As the natural gateway to Upper Peru, through which royalist armies advanced again and again, the gorge changed hands several times during the fighting between patriot forces and those of the king of Spain. Its towns suffered directly the passage of troops, the invasions and the reprisals.
The most famous episode linked to the region is the Jujuy Exodus of 1812, ordered by General Manuel Belgrano. Faced with the advance of a powerful royalist army from the north, Belgrano ordered the population of Jujuy and the gorge to abandon their homes, burn the fields and take away or destroy anything that might serve the enemy, withdrawing southwards. That 'scorched earth' policy denied the royalists resources and was key to the later patriot victories at Tucumán and Salta. Later, the guerrillas of the north, led by chieftains such as Martín Miguel de Güemes and by gaucho and peasant militiamen, held the northern frontier for years.
The memory of that epic was engraved forever in Humahuaca with the building, in the 20th century, of the monumental Monument to the Heroes of Independence, a work by the sculptor Ernesto Soto Avendaño inaugurated in 1950. Its great central figure, an indigenous man with his arm raised, honors not only the founding fathers but above all the people of the north — indigenous, mestizo, anonymous — who put their bodies into the fight for freedom.
Through the 20th century, Humahuaca went from being a waystation on the old royal road to becoming one of the symbolic and administrative centers of northern Jujuy province, the seat of its department. The arrival of the railway in the gorge and, later, the consolidation of Ruta Nacional 9 brought the town into the country's modern communications network, without it losing its face of adobe, stone and cardón cactus.
The great work that shaped the town's identity in this period was the Monument to the Heroes of Independence. Its author, the Tucumán sculptor Ernesto Soto Avendaño, worked on the project for more than a decade, on a large-scale work combining stone and bronze that stands on a hill overlooking the town. Inaugurated in 1950, the monument became Humahuaca's visual icon and a symbol of recognition for the struggle of the peoples of the north for independence.
Through the 20th century, Humahuaca also strengthened its cultural profile: the northern Carnival, with its comparsas, the livestock 'señalada', the coplas, the charango and the caja drum, the patron saint festivals and the devotion to the Pachamama kept the town's Andean tradition alive. That authenticity, far from thinning out, became one of its greatest draws, attracting travelers and artists who found in the gorge an inexhaustible source of inspiration.
Definitive international recognition came on July 2, 2003, when UNESCO inscribed the Quebrada de Humahuaca on its World Heritage list, in the 'cultural landscape' category. The listing doesn't protect an isolated monument but the whole corridor of about 150 kilometers following the course of the Río Grande, recognizing its value as a route of communication and trade used continuously for some ten thousand years.
UNESCO highlighted that the gorge preserves exceptional testimony to the successive cultures that lived in it and crossed it: the pre-Hispanic peoples with their archaeological sites and farming terraces (such as those at Coctaca), the Inca Road, the towns and churches of the colonial period, the traces of the wars of independence and the present-day life of the Andean communities. All of it in an extraordinary natural setting, with its famous colored mountains, such as the Cerro de los Siete Colores in Purmamarca or the Serranía del Hornocal (the Hill of 14 Colors) near Humahuaca.
Humahuaca, which gave its name to the whole gorge, is one of the emblematic towns of this cultural landscape. UNESCO recognition boosted tourism and the enhancement of the heritage, but it also raised the challenge of preserving the authenticity of local life against the growth of tourist activity. Today, Humahuaca is still, above all, a living Andean town: with its people, its music, its Carnival and its devotion, faithful to the ten thousand years of history that made it one of the places with the most soul in northern Argentina.