Give Salta three or four days. Two belong to the city: the Inca mummies at the MAAM, the cable car up Cerro San Bernardo, the Cabildo on Plaza 9 de Julio and a late night on Calle Balcarce. The rest belong to the province, either south to the Torrontés vineyards at Cafayate or northwest over the Cuesta del Obispo and up to Salinas Grandes.
Argentina's northwest capital sits at 1,152 m in the Lerma valley, ringed by cloud forest and an hour from the Andes. Colonial Salta is compact and walkable, the folk music is live seven nights a week, and the desert starts where the suburbs stop.
Three Inca children were found frozen near the 6,739 m summit of Llullaillaco in 1999, and they are the reason this museum exists. One is displayed at a time, rotated, in a cooled cylinder; around them sit the textiles and offerings buried alongside. It is a quiet, careful room, and it is the single best hour in Salta.
The teleférico climbs 284 m over roughly a kilometre of cable and lands on a terraced summit with the whole Lerma valley below. Ten minutes up, and the stone staircase down behind the Güemes monument takes about forty. Go late in the day, when the valley light is worth the queue.
A peña is a room with a stage, long tables, empanadas and a bombo drum, and Salta runs them every night of the week. The Balcarce strip by the old station holds most of them. Nothing starts before 22:00 and the good sets land after midnight, so eat late and plan a slow morning.
The trip runs as a coach up the Quebrada del Toro to San Antonio de los Cobres, then the train out to the La Polvorilla viaduct: 224 m of curved steel, 64 m above the ravine, at 4,220 m. It is a full day that starts before dawn, and it is thin air the whole way. Book weeks ahead in high season.
San Francisco is terracotta, ivory and white, and its bell tower runs to 54 m, the tallest on the continent. The Franciscans have held the plot since Salta was laid out in 1582; fire took the church in 1772 and the rebuild is what stands. National Historic Monument since 1941, minor basilica since 1992.
The two-storey arcade on the south side of Plaza 9 de Julio is the best preserved colonial town hall in Argentina, and it holds the Museo Histórico del Norte. Colonial furniture, sacred art, coins and carriages, plus the balcony over the plaza. Give it an hour, and start upstairs.
Every second street, the airport and a mounted bronze carry his name, and this house is where it makes sense: Martín Miguel de Güemes held the northern border against the royalists with gaucho cavalry and died of a wound in 1821. Ten rooms, told with projection and staging rather than glass cases.
The pink and gold front on the north side of the plaza holds the images of the Señor y la Virgen del Milagro, carried through the streets every September since a 1692 earthquake stopped short of the city. Güemes lies in the side chapel with the other northern commanders. Free, and rarely empty.
The city market is the cheapest good meal in Salta: empanadas by the half dozen, humitas, goat cheese, spices and rough regional wine, with textile and leather stalls along the edges. Go at midday, when the food counters are running and the produce halls are still full.
The oldest building in the city is a working Carmelite convent, so the nuns stay behind the wall and visitors get the street front: whitewashed adobe and a carob door carved by Indigenous craftsmen in 1762. Two minutes of looking, on the walk between the plaza and the cable car station.
A private collection of Andean and Amazonian craft, densely hung.
Colonial religious painting and northern artists in a period townhouse.
A 19th-century house showing rotating current work, free of the colonial theme.
Cheapest good lunch in Salta, upstairs at the city market.
The 54 m bell tower, the tallest church tower in South America.
Oldest building in the city, with a carob door carved in 1762.
Province-wide craft in an 18th-century manor. Daily, 10:00 to 20:30.
The city market: food, spices, goat cheese, leather and cheap wine.
Civic parades marking Belgrano's 1813 victory on the Campo de Castañares.
Neighbourhood comparsas, flour and water, and the ritual burial of the devil.
Processions from the cathedral and San Francisco through the colonial grid.
The city's 1582 founding, marked with a plaza ceremony and free concerts.
An all-night gaucho vigil at the Güemes monument before the 17 June tribute.
Offerings buried for the earth in homes and plazas across the northwest.
Ten days of pilgrimage, ending in the largest procession in northern Argentina.
The valley's folk festival, three nights of music 180 km south of the city.
About 10 km southwest of the plaza, with flights from Buenos Aires, Córdoba and a handful of regional capitals. A taxi or remise into the centre takes around 20 minutes.
The long-distance station sits beside Parque San Martín, ten blocks from the plaza. Overnight coaches run to Buenos Aires, and local services to Cafayate, Cachi and Jujuy.
The city network is cashless and runs on the local SAETA card, not the national SUBE. Buy one and top it up at a kiosk, or at the airport before your first ride.
Metered taxis work the centre, and remises are booked by phone or app for a fixed price. Both are cheap by Argentine standards, and both prefer small notes.
Corn, beans and meat stewed for hours. Eaten on 1 May and every cold night.
Lean altiplano meat, served as a steak or dried into charqui for stews.
Small, juicy, knife-cut beef with potato and a chilli edge. Baked in a clay oven.
Creamed young corn steamed inside its own husk, and served in the leaf.
Ground corn rather than fresh, wrapped and filled with pork, beef or charqui.
Kid goat cooked slowly on a stake, with papines and roast peppers.
Stringy squash preserve, eaten with goat cheese or walnuts as dessert.
Cafayate's white grape, floral and dry, grown above 1,700 m.
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