We spent two nights in the tourist town of Tilcara (about 8200 ft elevation) because we wanted to see high altitude altiplano terrain that we had not visited in this area in some time. There were two main objectives, both guided by Google Street view imagery. One was a small marsh that appeared to have many birds characteristic of the high Andes, the other was a hillside covered with large columnar cacti that we had last seen in southern Bolivia many years ago. It barely extended into Argentina in this area and the street view imagery showed hillsides covered with them. To reach them, however, made for a very long day – about 300 miles of driving round trip.
Tilcara lies in the Humahuaca Canyon (Barranca de Humahuaca) that climbs from a few thousand feet elevation to about 12,000 ft at it’s end on the altiplano of extreme northern Argentina. The altiplano (high/flat) doesn’t have many redeeming plants or animals – except a few.
Our first main stop was at the marsh just outside the town of Abra Pampa, where a dirt road made it easy to approach the birds we were after. And they were there – Flamingos (2 species for sure), Andean Avocets, several ducks, stilts, Andean Geese etc. Only drawback of this site was that the road was dusty and cars would kick up the dust as they came by – every few minutes.
After we’d seen enough we proceeded to the Argentinean border town of La Quiaca and turned east – driving about 20 miles before eventually encountering the large cacti. The surprise to us was the very large number of vicuña we saw along the way – seemingly quite tame. We saw a few hundred probably. Finally, the large Orocereus celcianus appeared and we managed to spend a few minutes with them – despite occasional cold,light, rain. We had the long drive back to Tilcara, arriving at dusk.
Olympus images
Tilcara iNaturalist insects can be seen here
iPhone photos
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