Salta Argentina Adventure Tour

You are met at Salta airport and taken to your hotel. In the evening comes a 4x4 ride out to Potrero Grande, a place sheltered by mountains, where you drive a quad bike along paths crossed by streams and difficult slopes. That is the opening move, and it tells you what kind of trip this is. Apart from the transfer and the ride, the day is yours.

Three tours in one day, and the 4x4s are what make it possible. First comes the Road to the Clouds, which follows the tracks of the famous Train to the Clouds through the Quebrada del Toro to San Antonio de los Cobres: railway engineering started in the 1920s, seen here from the road beside it. Then the Puna, on Route 40 up to Salinas Grandes. Then the Cuesta de Lipán and on to the village of Purmamarca. The circuit closes with your arrival in Salta.

Day three has no engine in it. After breakfast at your hotel you meet your guide and the other riders, then spend the full day on horseback near San Lorenzo, among the hills, landscapes and farms of the area. The route takes in a farm at Lesser, a village near San Lorenzo, and the fields around it. It is a relaxing way to see the country. In the late afternoon you return to your hotel in San Lorenzo.

Another full day, and this one starts on the water. After breakfast you go out to Cabra Corral for rafting and trekking, rafting first: the rapids of the Juramento river, through a canyon that is half the reason to go. Once the rapids are behind you, you hike through Cerro Peñas Blancas, named for its white rocks, until you arrive at an indigenous observatory. In the late afternoon you transfer back to your hotel in San Lorenzo.

Usually the city comes first. This one saves it for last. After breakfast you take a city tour of Salta and climb Cerro San Bernardo on the outskirts, then the Historic Museum of the North, the Town Hall, the Cathedral and the Church of San Francisco. The crafts market is where to buy silver and handicrafts. In the afternoon you are transferred to the bus station or the airport, for the journey home or on to your next destination in South America.