Argentina - Pucará de Juella

A pucará is a defensive hilltop site or fortress built by the prehispanic and historic inhabitants of the central Andean area. Around the year 1000 there was a line of twenty-two of these aboriginal fortresses that were deployed on the hills along the Quebrada de Humahuaca. The pucará of Tilcara (PiP4) is the best-known archaeological site of northwest Argentina, but often full of tourists.

Less than 10 km’s away we found another pucará which we heard about in our accommodation. This pucará de Juella is located at 2.750 meters on a plateau outside the hamlet of Juella. This fortress was inhabited until the 12th century and is not altered or reconstructed. The ruins - often nothing more than fallen rocks or deposits of the pucará - are surrounded by a forest of cardones.

It was quite difficult to find the pucará, as it was not signposted and we even had to cross a fast-flowing river (PiP3). On the other bank of that river we found a local, who - for a couple of pesos - pointed us in the right direction.