Salta

Salta's Museum of High Altitude Archaeology holds one of the more genuinely striking archaeological finds in South America — three Inca children, mummified by the extreme cold and dryness near the 6,700-meter summit of Llullaillaco volcano, discovered in 1999 as part of a capacocha ceremony, an Inca ritual sacrifice tied to significant events like a ruler's death or a natural disaster. The preservation is exceptional enough that researchers have studied the children's organs, last meals, and the intricately woven textiles they were buried in.

The city itself, nicknamed Salta la Linda (Salta the Pretty), preserves one of Argentina's best-kept colonial centers, its whitewashed churches and plazas surviving in a way that many other Argentine cities lost to later development.

North of the city, the Quebrada de Humahuaca cuts a dramatic path through the Andes, its rock walls striped in reds, greens, and yellows from mineral deposits laid down over millions of years. The town of Purmamarca, sitting beneath the most famous of these formations, the Cerro de los Siete Colores, draws day-trippers from Salta specifically for the view.

The Train to the Clouds, built in the early 20th century to link Argentina with Chile across the Andes, climbs to over 4,200 meters at its highest point, crossing a dramatic curved viaduct along the way — one of the highest railways in the world, and still run today primarily as a scenic tourist excursion rather than functional cross-border transport.

South of Salta, the high-altitude vineyards around Cafayate produce Torrontés, a white wine grape that thrives at elevations most vines can't tolerate, giving the region a genuine wine-tourism identity distinct from Argentina's better-known Mendoza wine country further south.