Salta

Three Inca child mummies found at a volcano summit are kept here. One only is shown at once, inside a chilled glass case.

A cable car goes up, or 1070 steps take a walker to the same place. From the top the grid of the city lies open.

The line climbs to 4220 metres and one viaduct crosses a valley 63 metres up. Air runs thin, so every carriage carries oxygen.

Vines run through a valley at 1700 metres with red rock walls behind them. Strong sun thickens the skins and concentrates the scent.

Red sandstone eroded into forms called the throat and the amphitheatre. A sound made inside the amphitheatre hangs in the air for a while.

Each layer holds a different mineral, so the hill bands into seven colours. The colours read strongest early, while the sun sits low.

A white salt flat spreads over 212 square kilometres at 3450 metres. Where blocks have been cut out, water gathers and mirrors the sky.

A front painted deep red and yellow shows from far across the square. Its bell tower stands 53 metres, the tallest in this region.

Northwestern folk music is played and the audience gets up to dance. In many of them nothing starts until after ten at night.

White walled houses run together with a snow peak of 6380 metres behind them. The road there passes a national park where only cactus grows.

A pink cathedral on the north flank of the main square, home to the Lord and Virgin of the Miracle. Every 15 September both are carried round the city, and pilgrims walk in from across the north. Independence hero Guemes rests in a pantheon by the entrance.

The colonial town hall whose long two-storey arcade lines the plaza's southern edge. It now houses the Museum of Northern History, showing religious paintings and old carriages. From the upper balcony, the plaza and cathedral face you straight on.

A pass where Route 33 to Cachi zigzags up the walls of a red valley. At the top, Piedra del Molino, clouds often lie below your feet. On the far side, a dead-straight road runs between forests of giant cactus.

A gorge on the gravel stretch of Route 40 between Angastaco and Cafayate, where rocks slant up like arrowheads. Sandstone tilted by ages of tectonic movement has been honed sharp by wind. The road is narrow and dusty, so drive slowly.

The central market, right downtown, its stalls piled with chillies, herbs, coca leaf and highland potatoes. The food counters inside sell cheap empanadas and locro, packed with locals at lunch. Prices are mostly fixed rather than haggled.

A convent reckoned to be Salta's oldest surviving building. A wooden door said to have been carved by indigenous craftsmen in 1762 is set into its white wall. It is a closed order, so visitors look from the door and move on.

South of Cachi along Route 40, houses keep looms in the yard and weave ponchos. The stretch is called the Artisans' Road, and the work goes on in plain view. A poncho is weeks of work, and passers-by see half-woven cloth hanging on the looms.