Jujuy, as everyone calls it, sits in a green bowl about 1,200 metres up in the far north-west of Argentina, where the wet forests of the eastern slope meet the dry high country behind. The city was founded in 1593, on the third attempt, after earlier settlements were wiped out or abandoned, and it still has the look of a provincial capital that has had to work for its place. About three hundred thousand people live here, with the river Xibi Xibi running through the middle of town and the hills of the Yungas closing in on three sides. It is the usual start for the long climb into the Andes.
The history you notice is political. In 1812 General Belgrano ordered the whole population to leave the city and burn what they could not carry, so the royalist army would find nothing, a sacrifice remembered every August as the Éxodo Jujeño. Today the main square, with its cathedral and its gilded pulpit, is a relaxed place of shoeshine stalls and old men reading the paper, and the market is worth a wander for coca leaves, cheese, spices and woven goods.
For a rider, Jujuy is the gateway to two of the great roads of the continent. Ruta 9 heads north up the Quebrada de Humahuaca, the painted valley that earned a UNESCO listing in 2003, with its striped hills, adobe villages and cactus forests. Ruta 52, branching west through Purmamarca, climbs over the Cuesta de Lipán, passing 4,000 metres before dropping to the white salt flats and on towards Paso de Jama and Chile. The first kilometres out of town are fast, then the valley narrows, the vegetation thins, and the colours begin to change from green to ochre to red.
This is where to be sensible. Altitude arrives faster than you think, and so does cold: even in summer, the high stretches can be near freezing at dawn, with afternoon storms from December to March that bring rockfalls and washouts on the quebrada roads. Fill the tank here, or at the stations in Palpalá and the larger towns, because fuel out on the high road is sparse and sometimes rationed or simply unavailable in small villages. Drink water, chew coca if the locals swear by it, and take things slowly on day one. Eat humitas or an empanada salteña and a cold beer in the plaza before you set off, then go to bed early. The mountains reward those who start early and stop often.