Purmamarca is the village most people photograph first in the Quebrada de Humahuaca, and the reason is the hill behind it. The Cerro de los Siete Colores rises straight from the edge of the settlement in bands of pink, rust, ochre, green and grey, and the colours change hourly: pale and chalky at noon, deep and almost wet-looking when the low sun rakes across them in the late afternoon. It is a small adobe village, about two thousand three hundred metres up in Jujuy province, in the far north-west of Argentina.
The Quebrada itself is a long dry valley carved by the Rio Grande, and was a trade corridor long before the Spaniards or even the Inca arrived. Llama caravans carried salt, maize and textiles between the Andean highlands and the lowlands, and the route later became the road to Potosi and the silver. UNESCO listed the whole valley as a cultural landscape in 2003. In Purmamarca the little church, dedicated to Santa Rosa de Lima and dating to the eighteenth century, stands beside the square, where stalls sell woven goods, ponchos and carved cactus-wood bits and pieces. It gets busy with tour buses in the middle of the day and quiet again in the evening.
For riders the village is a short detour off Ruta 9, the main road up the Quebrada. Ruta 52 starts here and climbs west in a famous series of switchbacks, the Cuesta de Lipan, towards the Salinas Grandes and the border passes into Chile, so this is where a ride into the high Andes begins. Expect thin air, strong sun and sudden cold, and carry water; altitude can make you headachy even if you are only riding.
Fuel is the practical question. Purmamarca itself is tiny, and you should not count on finding petrol at the pump you need, so treat Tilcara, about twenty kilometres up the valley and the nearest place from the list with five thousand people, as your reliable stop, or fill in the provincial capital before you start. Food is simple and good: empanadas, humita, locro, quinoa dishes and the occasional llama stew, with a coca tea if the altitude is bothering you. Mornings are the best time, before the wind gets up and the tour groups arrive.