Wonders of Northern Argentina

A guide meets you at Salta Airport and brings you to a hotel in the historical center. That is the day. On purpose. Everything after this one is scheduled, and the first evening is not, so use it: walk out into the neighborhood, find dinner, or sit still and let the rest of your trip catch up with you. Both are correct answers.

Salta in a morning. Cerro San Bernardo first, on the edge of town, because the view from up there explains the layout of everything below before you walk into it. Then the Cathedral, the Church of San Francisco, the Town Hall and the Historic Museum of the North — colonial Salta, in one go. Finish at the crafts market, where the silver is. The afternoon is yours, which is the right way around: see the city with a guide, then go back to whichever part of it you liked.

Today the drive is the point. Out of Salta through Quijano Field and White River, into the Gorge of El Toro near San Antonio de los Cobres, past the vast white salt flats, then over the Cuesta de Lipán and down the other side. Purmamarca is at the bottom, under the Hill of Seven Colors, and the rock does what the photographs promise — the bands really are that distinct, and they move with the light through the afternoon. Check in, swim, wander the village. You stay the night here.

This is the archaeology day, and it goes further north than the shorter itineraries do. Leave Purmamarca for Tilcara, known as the archaeological capital of northwestern Argentina. You see the Pucará and then the Archaeological Museum, which is the correct order — the site first, then the things that came out of it. Afterward the church at Uquía, then Humahuaca. You end the day back in Salta. That sounds like backtracking. It is not: you drive the same valley twice at different hours, and it does not look the same twice.

Cafayate and Quilmes are really one two-day excursion, and this is the first half of it. The drive in runs past rock formations that have earned their names — the Obelisk, the Key, the Devil's Throat — and then the wine country opens up. Cafayate is Torrontés country: a white that is nothing like the Malbec most people come to Argentina for. Take the vineyard tour, take the long lunch, do not rush the afternoon. You sleep at a winery resort looking out over the Cafayate Canyon and its granite hills — the one night where the hotel is part of the itinerary, not a place to put your bags.

The longest driving day, and the one that changes the landscape under you. Leave the winery resort, stop again at the ruins of Quilmes and at Tafí, and cross the valley of Amaicha. From Quilmes the road climbs to the Calchaquí peaks at 3,042 meters, drops into the valley of Tafí for La Banda Church, then falls into the Gorge of Los Sosa, where the dry high country turns — quite suddenly — into yungas: wet, green, subtropical. Tucumán is at the far end of that road. The city tour covers the Cathedral, the Historical House of Culture, Independence Square and 9 de Julio Park.

Transfer to Tucumán Airport and fly out, home or on to the next part of your Argentina. Ending here rather than back in Salta is why the route works: a week in one direction, no road driven twice. Yesterday's descent through the Gorge of Los Sosa, from dry high valleys into green subtropical forest, is the last thing you see of the northwest. It is a good last thing.