Uquía

Uquía is a hamlet of a few dusty blocks on the road up the Quebrada de Humahuaca, and travellers stop for one reason: the church of San Francisco de Paula, a thick-walled adobe building from the seventeenth century whose interior holds one of the most striking series of colonial paintings in South America. Along the nave hang the ángeles arcabuceros, archangels dressed as Spanish noblemen and carrying muskets, painted by artists of the Cusco school who blended European religious imagery with local dress, faces and colour. The gilded retable behind the altar and the beamed cactus-wood ceiling belong to the same period. Behind the village a short walk leads into the Quebrada de las Señoritas, a small gorge of red and ochre rock formations that most visitors miss entirely.

What you actually see

• The armed angels - the Cusco-school archangels painted with muskets and courtly dress.
• The adobe church - seventeenth-century San Francisco de Paula with gilded altarpiece.
• The cactus-wood ceiling - the beamed roof typical of colonial building in the valley.
• Quebrada de las Señoritas - the small red-rock gorge behind the village.

When to go

April to November for dry weather. The church keeps limited hours and is sometimes locked between services, so arriving late morning or early afternoon is safest. Photography inside is usually restricted to protect the paintings.

Honest expectations

Uquía is a stop rather than a destination; there is little else in the village and few places to eat. If the church is closed the visit collapses, and hours are not reliably published. The paintings are dim in the low interior light, which is deliberate but disappointing to some.

Nearby

Humahuaca is a short drive north; Tilcara and Maimará lie south down the gorge.