Belén and Londres

The region’s main settlement of BELÉN is squeezed between the Sierra de Belén and the river of the same name. Olive groves and plantations of capsicum – paprika-producing peppers (pimentones) – stretch across the fertile valley to the south. A convenient stopover, Belén offers the area’s best accommodation and a couple of restaurants, and it’s also a base for adventure tourism, including trekking and horse riding. And since Belén promotes itself as the Capital del Poncho you might like to visit the many excellent teleras, or textile workshops, dotted around the town; they also turn out beautiful blankets and sweaters made of llama, vicuña and sheep’s wool, mostly in natural colours. The wool is sometimes blended with walnut bark, to give the local cloth, known as belichas or belenistos, its typical rough texture. As for festivals, every January 6 a pilgrimage procession clambers to a huge statue of the Virgen de Belén, overlooking the town from its high vantage point to the west, the Cerro de la Virgen.

On the western flank of its main square, Plaza Presbítero Olmos de Aguilera, shaded by whitewashed orange trees and bushy palms and ringed by cafés and ice-cream parlours, stands the Italianate Iglesia Nuestra Señora de Belén, clearly inspired by the cathedral in Catamarca and designed and built by Italian immigrants at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its brickwork is bare, without plaster or decoration, lending it a rough-hewn but not displeasing look. Housed on the first floor of a rather grim commercial arcade, at San Martín and Belgrano, half a block from the main square, the Museo Provincial Cóndor Huasi has one of the country’s most important collections of Diaguita artefacts, but is poorly laid out. The huge number of ceramics, and some bronze and silver items, trace the Diaguita culture through all four archeological “periods”: the Initial Period, 300 BC–300 AD, is represented by simple but by no means primitive pieces, often in the shape of squashes or maize-cobs; in the Early Period (Cóndor Huasi and Ciénaga; 300–550 AD), anthropomorphic and zoomorphic ceramics dominate, including naive representations of llamas and pumas; the Middle or Aguada Period, 650–950 AD, produced some of the museum’s most prized pieces, such as a ceramic jaguar of astonishing finesse; and the Late Period, from 1000 AD onwards, includes the so-called Santa María culture, when craftsmen produced large urns, vases and amphoras decorated with complex, mostly abstract geometric patterns, with depictions of snakes, rheas and toads. There are a few Inca artefacts, too.

Fifteen kilometres west of Belén and even more charming, with partly crumbling adobe houses and pretty orchards, LONDRES lies 2km off the RN-40 along a winding road that joins its upper and lower towns, on either side of the Río Hondo, a usually dry river that peters out in the Salar de Pipanaco. Known as the Cuna de la Nuez, or Walnut Heartland, the town celebrates the Fiesta de la Nuez with folklore and crafts displays during the first few days of February. Londres de Abajo, the lower town, is centred on Plaza José Eusebio Colombres, where you’ll find the simple, whitewashed eighteenth-century Iglesia de San Juan Bautista, in front of which the walnut festival is held. The focal point for the rest of the year is Londres de Arriba’s Plaza Hipólito Yrigoyen, overlooked by the quaint Iglesia de la Inmaculada Concepción, a once lovely church in a pitiful state of repair but noteworthy for a harmonious colonnade and its fine bells, said to be the country’s oldest. As yet, there’s no accommodation in the town, but ask around, just in case someone has a room to let.

Londres’ humble present-day aspect belies a long and prestigious history, including the fact that it’s Argentina’s second oldest “city” (ciudad), founded in 1558, only five years after Santiago del Estero. Diego de Almagro and his expedition from Cusco began scouring the area in the 1530s and founded a settlement which was named in honour of the marriage between Philip, heir to the Spanish throne, and Mary Tudor: hence the tribute to the English capital in the village’s name. Alongside the municipalidad, on the wall of which is a quaint fresco testifying to the town’s glorious past, is the small but interesting Museo Arqueológico, displaying ceramics and other finds from the impressive Shinkal ruins. The ruins themselves lie 5km west; just follow the well-signposted scenic road, next to the Iglesia de la Inmaculada Concepción. Amazingly intact, though parts of it are over-restored in a zealous attempt to reconstruct the fortress, it was the site of a decisive battle in the Great Calchaquí Uprising. After Chief Chelemín cut off the water supplies to Londres and set fire to the town, forcing its inhabitants to flee to La Rioja, he was captured and had his body ripped apart by four horses. Shinkal gives you an insight into what Diaguita settlements in the region must have looked like: splendid steps lead to the top of high ceremonial mounds, with great views of the oasis and Sierra de Zapata.