Casabindo

Casabindo is a handful of adobe houses scattered across the open puna at around 3,500 metres, and its church, Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, seems impossibly grand for so small a place: a broad whitewashed facade flanked by two bell towers, sometimes called the cathedral of the puna, built in the eighteenth century when the surrounding highlands supported far more people. Inside hang colonial paintings of archangels in the Cusco style, cousins of those at Uquía. The village is best known for 15 August, the feast of the Assumption, when hundreds of people converge from across the highlands for processions, music and the Toreo de la Vincha, an old custom in which men try to take a ribbon from between the horns of a bull that is not killed, and which is unlike anything else in the country.

What you actually see

• The twin-towered church - the eighteenth-century white facade known as the puna cathedral.
• The colonial paintings - Cusco-school archangels inside the nave.
• The August festival - processions, music and the Toreo de la Vincha on 15 August.
• The empty puna - vast, treeless high plateau in every direction.

When to go

April to November for passable roads. The village is almost deserted on ordinary days, so the festival on 15 August is the reason most travellers time a visit; expect crowds, cold nights and no accommodation to speak of. Days are bright, nights below freezing.

Honest expectations

Outside the festival there is very little here and the church may well be locked. Roads in are unpaved and rough, distances are long and there is essentially no infrastructure, food or fuel. At 3,500 metres the altitude and cold are serious considerations.

Nearby

Abra Pampa lies north; the Laguna de los Pozuelos reserve is further northwest on the plateau.