Four days in Salta: where Argentina stops feeling European
Three nights in the colonial capital of the northwest, with the frozen Inca children at the MAAM, the railway that climbs into the puna and a long day up the Quebrada de Humahuaca.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Salta
- Places
- 9 across 4 days
Buenos Aires is a European city that happens to be in South America. Salta, fifteen hundred kilometres northwest, is the opposite: an Andean city with a Spanish colonial centre bolted onto it, where the food is Bolivian more than Italian, the music has panpipes in it, and the faces on the street are indigenous rather than Genoese.
It is also, by common agreement, the prettiest city in Argentina. The main square is a full colonial set piece with an arcaded town hall from 1783 on one side, and the streets around it have kept their low houses and their painted churches while every other Argentine city knocked its down.
Three nights is enough for the city and two very long days out: the railway that climbs to a viaduct at 4,220 metres, and the coloured valley running north towards Bolivia. Neither is a half day and neither should be missed.
Highlights
- The MAAM, where three Inca children left as offerings on a 6,700 metre summit are shown one at a time
- The Cabildo and Plaza 9 de Julio, the most complete colonial square in the country
- The Tren a las Nubes, climbing to a steel viaduct in the middle of the high desert
- The seven-coloured hill at Purmamarca and the fourteen-coloured ridge above Humahuaca
- A peña on Calle Balcarce, where the guitars start at eleven and stop when they stop
Where to stay
Salta
About six hundred thousand people live in Salta, in a green valley with mountains on three sides, and the colonial core is only about eight blocks square. Founded in 1582 on the road between Peru and the Atlantic, it spent two centuries as a mule-trading town and never lost the shape.
The city fills a day and a half. What fills the rest is the country around it: the desert and the viaduct to the west, and the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a UNESCO-listed valley of coloured rock running north towards the Bolivian border, to the north.
Day by day
Day 1 in Salta
Plaza 9 de Julio, the Cabildo and the children on the mountain
The square is the point of Salta. Arcades on two sides, a pink cathedral on a third, palms and jacarandas in the middle, and cafes under the colonnades where people sit for hours. The old town hall, built in 1783, has the best surviving arcaded facade in Argentina and a museum of the region behind it.
Across the square is the MAAM, and it is the reason to give Salta more than a night. In 1999 an expedition found three Inca children on the summit of Llullaillaco, a 6,700 metre volcano on the Chilean border, where they had been left as offerings five hundred years earlier and frozen since. They are not remains in the usual sense: they look asleep. One of the three is displayed at a time, in a cooled case, rotating every few months, and the museum handles the ethics of showing them at all with more honesty than most institutions manage.
Take the rest of the afternoon slowly. San Francisco, three blocks away, is deep red and ivory with a tower you can see from most of the city, and it was finished in 1796.
Then eat empanadas, and go to a peña late.
- 10:00
Cabildo Histórico de Salta
CultureThe colonial town hall of 1783, two storeys of white arcades on the main square, now the regional history museum. Go up to the upper gallery for the view along the colonnade, which is the photograph of Salta.
- 12:00
MAAM Museum
CultureThe high altitude archaeology museum, built around the three Inca children found frozen on the summit of Llullaillaco in 1999. One is shown at a time in a refrigerated case. Small, sober, and the most affecting thing you will see in northern Argentina. Allow an hour and a half.
- 15:00
Iglesia San Francisco
VisitA deep red and ivory basilica finished in 1796, with a tower that dominates the skyline of the low colonial centre. Free, five minutes from the square, and worth going in for the ceiling.
- 21:00
Empanadas, then a pena on Balcarce
EatOrder the empanadas salteñas by the half dozen, baked, with the meat cut by knife rather than minced. Then walk up to Balcarce, where the folk bars fill after eleven and the audience knows every word.
With more time: The Pajcha museum, a private collection of Andean and Amazonian textiles, silver and religious art in a house a few streets from the square, is far better than its size suggests and takes forty minutes. The Museo Velarde, another house-museum, belonged to a lawyer who spent his money on tango musicians and painters and left the lot to the city.
Day 2 in Salta
The train to the clouds
The Tren a las Nubes is one of the highest railways in the world and it exists because Argentina wanted a line to the Chilean border across country that has no business carrying one. It climbs from the valley into the high desert on switchbacks, spirals and viaducts, and ends at La Polvorilla, a steel trestle bridge on stilts at 4,220 metres with nothing around it for as far as you can see.
How the day works has changed more than once, and the current version usually involves a coach out to San Antonio de los Cobres and the train for the final section, rather than a rail journey the whole way. Check what you are actually booking, because the difference is several hours.
Either way it is a full day, roughly fourteen hours door to door, at altitudes that will make you slow and sleepy. A doctor travels with the train and oxygen is carried, which tells you the altitude is not decorative.
The high plateau on the way is the real reward: llamas, salt, adobe villages, and light that goes on for a hundred kilometres. Get back, eat something small and sleep.
- 07:00
Tren a las Nubes
OtherA full-day trip into the puna ending at the La Polvorilla viaduct at 4,220 metres. Book ahead, since it does not run daily and sells out. Take water, sun protection and a warm layer, and eat lightly before you go up.
With more time: If the train is not running or not worth the price to you, the alternative day out west is the road to the Salinas Grandes salt flats via the Cuesta del Lipan, which reaches over 4,100 metres and delivers a horizon of white in every direction. Most Salta agencies sell it combined with Purmamarca, which makes for a very long day but a good one.
Day 3 in Salta
Up the Quebrada de Humahuaca
North of Salta the road runs into a narrow valley of layered rock that has been a trade route for several thousand years, first as an Inca road and then as the mule track between Buenos Aires and Potosi. UNESCO listed the whole valley in 2003, both for the geology and for the villages strung along it.
Purmamarca comes first, a small adobe village under the Cerro de los Siete Colores, a hillside striped in ochre, green, violet and red. The colours are strongest in the morning, and there is a short circuit walk behind the village that gets you away from the craft stalls in the square.
Tilcara, half an hour further, has the Pucara, a reconstructed hilltop fortress of the Omaguaca people with a view up and down the valley and a botanical garden of cactus at the entrance.
The last stop is the best. Above Humahuaca, a rough road climbs to about 4,300 metres and turns a corner onto the Serrania de Hornocal, a serrated ridge banded in fourteen distinct colours running the length of the horizon. It wants the afternoon sun, which conveniently is when you will get there.
This is a twelve hour day from Salta and a hard one. If you have a spare night, sleeping in Purmamarca or Tilcara instead turns it into two easy days and adds a night sky worth staying up for.
- 10:00
Cerro de Siete Colores
NatureA hillside of banded rock behind the village of Purmamarca, at its best before about eleven in the morning. Walk the short circuit at the edge of the village rather than paying for a viewpoint, and buy something in the square, which is a genuine craft market.
- 12:30
Pucará
HistoricA pre-Inca hill fort above Tilcara, partly reconstructed, with stone house circles, a cactus garden and a long view of the valley. There is a small archaeology museum on the same ticket down in the village.
- 15:30
Serranía de Hornocal
NatureA ridge of fourteen coloured strata at around 4,300 metres, up a rough road from Humahuaca. Twenty minutes on foot from the car park to the viewpoint, and the altitude will make that feel longer. Afternoon light is what it needs.
With more time: In Humahuaca itself the town hall has a mechanical saint who comes out of a hatch at noon like a cuckoo clock, and the independence monument above the square is a long flight of steps for a good view. The terraced ruins at Coctaca, the largest pre-Columbian site in northern Argentina, are ten minutes further and almost nobody goes.
Day 4 in Salta
The cable car, a small museum and the flight south
Cerro San Bernardo stands directly behind the city at 1,458 metres, about two hundred and fifty above the streets, and a cable car goes up from the park at the bottom in eight minutes. There are also a thousand-odd steps if you would rather sweat. From the top the whole valley is laid out, with the ranges beyond it.
Coming down, the Pajcha museum is the right last thing in Salta: three rooms of Andean and Amazonian textiles, silverwork and religious carving, privately assembled and very well chosen, in a house that most visitors walk past.
Flights to Buenos Aires leave through the afternoon and the airport is twenty minutes from the centre, so a proper lunch beforehand is easy. If you are heading west, the bus to San Pedro de Atacama leaves early and takes most of a day over the Jama pass.
- 09:00
Cerro San Bernardo
NatureA cable car from Parque San Martin to a hill above the city, with terraced gardens, a cafe and a view over the whole valley at the top. Eight minutes up, or about a thousand steps if you insist. Go early before the haze builds.
- 11:30
Pajcha
VisitA private collection of South American folk art in a small house near the centre: textiles, masks, silver and colonial religious carving, densely hung and explained by whoever is on the desk. Forty minutes and a strong finish.
- 13:00
Last lunch near the square
EatLocro or humita if it is on, and a glass of cold Torrontes. The restaurants under the arcades are convenient and the ones a block off the square are better.
With more time: With a spare day rather than a spare morning, the road south to Cafayate through the Quebrada de las Conchas is the other great drive from Salta: red sandstone gorges with names like the Amphitheatre and the Devil's Throat, ending in the town where the Torrontes is made. It is about four hours each way and is usually sold as a full-day tour.
Before you go
Getting in and getting around
Flights from Buenos Aires take about two and a quarter hours and the airport is 10 km southwest of the centre. Coaches from Buenos Aires take a full day and a night, and from Cordoba around eleven hours. There are also buses west over the Paso de Jama to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, which is a spectacular ten hour crossing at high altitude.
The centre is a compact grid and everything in it is walked. The bus terminal and the cable car station are both about ten minutes from the main square on foot.
For the trips out, you either book a tour or hire a car. The Quebrada is a straightforward drive on a good road; the salt flats and the high passes beyond it are not, and the altitude does the deciding for most people.
Altitude
Salta itself sits at about 1,200 metres, which nobody notices. The days out are a different matter. The train reaches 4,220 metres, the Hornocal viewpoint above Humahuaca is around 4,300, and the Salinas Grandes salt flats are near 3,400.
That means going from a comfortable city to serious altitude and back in a single day, with no acclimatisation at all. Drink constantly, eat lightly, skip the alcohol at lunch, and chew coca leaves or drink the tea if it is offered, which it will be. If you feel worse than a mild headache, say so; on the train there is medical staff on board precisely because of this.
Eating and drinking
The empanada salteña is a small baked pastry filled with hand-cut beef, potato and spring onion, and Salta considers it the national standard against which all others fail. Locro, a thick maize and meat stew, and humita and tamales, both maize parcels steamed in the husk, are the other regional plates, and all of them are Andean rather than pampas food.
Torrontes, the aromatic white grape grown in the Calchaqui valleys south of here at some of the highest vineyards in the world, is the local wine and it is not like anything in Mendoza. Order it cold.
Calle Balcarce, six blocks north of the square, is where the peñas are: folk music bars where a band plays, everybody sings along, and the food is regional. They start late, around eleven, and they are the reason to be awake.
Where to stay
Within a few blocks of the main square. The centre is small, safe and pleasant, and staying in it puts the museums, the churches and the restaurants at walking distance and the tour pick-ups at your door.
Balcarce is livelier and noisier at the weekend. Anywhere further out and you will be taking taxis for no reason.
When to come
April to November is the dry season and the right time. The summer, from December to March, is the wet one, when the Quebrada gets afternoon storms, dirt roads wash out and the coloured hills sit under cloud.
Days are warm and nights are cold in any month, because of the altitude, so bring a layer even in January.
Salta is the city that makes sense of the rest of the country by not resembling it. Two thousand kilometres from the pampas and a few hours from Bolivia, it eats maize, sings in the minor key and keeps its dead Inca children in a museum on the main square.
West from here the bus climbs over the Andes to the Atacama in Chile. North the valley runs to the Bolivian border at La Quiaca. South is a two hour flight back to Buenos Aires and a completely different country.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is the Tren a las Nubes worth the money?
- It is expensive, the format keeps changing, and for a good part of the day you are on a coach rather than a train. What you are paying for is the puna: the salt, the llamas, the adobe villages and a steel bridge at four thousand two hundred metres. If the price stings, the Salinas Grandes road trip covers similar country for far less.
- Should I base myself in Salta or in Jujuy for the Quebrada?
- Salta has the flights, the museums and the food, and it is where almost everyone stays. But it is two hours from the bottom of the Quebrada and four from the top, so if the coloured valley is your main reason for coming north, put two nights in Purmamarca or Tilcara and treat Salta as the arrival and departure city.
- How hard is the altitude?
- Salta is low enough to ignore. The day trips are not: both the train and Hornocal go above four thousand metres from a standing start, which is a real jump. Most people get a headache and feel slow. Drink water constantly, do not drink alcohol on those days, and take the coca tea when it is offered.
- Is the northwest safe?
- Yes, and Salta is one of the easier Argentine cities. Usual care in the bus terminal area and at night, and the mountain roads are the actual hazard: they are narrow, unfenced and shared with trucks, which is a good argument for a driver rather than a hire car.
- Can I change this plan?
- Yes. Copy it, drop the train, add a night in the Quebrada, swap the last morning for the drive down to Cafayate.