[SALTA, ARGENTINA] —   You probably haven’t heard much about Salta, in the far northwest quadrant of Argentina, but the word is starting to spread. While everyone knows of Buenos Aires, Mendoza and Patagonia, it seems like Salta has just opened up. You take a two hour flight from Buenos Aires to the city of Salta and then there are a number of road tours you can take from there, each drive is amazing as the other. You read about “a four wheel drive is best” but I balked after booking a last-minute trip and they wanted a thousand bucks for a week and rented a small cross-over Peugeot — a surprising billygoat of a car — but after many harrowing close calls crossing rain-swollen rivers through the mountains, I would have paid five thousand for a 4WD.  You need a 4WD.  Your knuckles will not be white.

From Salta, there are many routes that you can choose, fanning out in different directions. Some you can go out and back. For others, I’d pick an overnight destination; as in the title and in nearly everything you read, everything is “a couple of hours” but I found the travel times to be much longer, the roads more arduous, the scenery beckoning you to stop every 10 kilometers.  Here’s an overview. For more detailed tours, look at the other YOU SHOULD sections. Here’s a great article from Travel & Leisure. Here’s a great article in Conde Nast Traveler, and another on Salta City, and another Conde Nast Article that’s a great summary. Here’s an older NYTimes article on Salta The Beautiful, and here’s a great article from the Wall Street Journal covering this exact route below.

Here’s the route we’ll be taking. The top and left side. From Salta to Cachi, then down to Molinos on this post.

What’s amazing about Salta is the incredible diversity of geology — you can see the entire development of the Earth in just a few hours.  Starting from Salta, you can head up through rain forests and roaring river gorges, riding along a varying road with overhangs, washouts and dramatic stream fording (pay attention to the rains, definitely).

After landing in Salta, a two hour flight from BA, rent ye a car or guide, preferably 4WD and head up Ruta 33. Climbing from the lush plains of Salta city, you instantly are thrust into a rainforest, with curvy, crazy roads dodging up the canyons, crossing thin bridges and going against the roaring ruddy river. Zig. Zag. Cross. Stop. Take off your white knuckles. Catch breath. Continue on….

Then as you rise, you start to get into more canyons, rich and lush.

Lush

It looks more like Ireland

Scotland, too.

The roads are just crazy and curvy.

After landing in Salta, a two hour flight from BA, rent ye a car or guide, preferably 4WD and head up Ruta 33. Climbing from the lush plains of Salta city, you instantly are thrust into a rainforest, with curvy, crazy roads dodging up the canyons, crossing thin bridges and going against the roaring ruddy river. Zig. Zag. Cross. Stop. Take off your white knuckles. Catch breath. Continue on….

This is why it’s good to have a 4WD in Salta — which I didn’t, unfortunately. When it rains, it roars. Especially in the rainforesty parts of Ruta 33 and the Cuesta del Obispo (“The Bishop’s Slope”) valley. The drive is the adventure. And the views amazing. Ruta 33 follows a roaring river, winding up the lush, dripping green canyons to the pass, in the direction of Cachi. As you ascend, the road conditions descend. This is me crossing one nasty, intruding river. You have to get a running start, gun it, and hope for the best. You can’t see the straight-down 1,500 ft drop off to the left. Nor feel the rear end of my car sliding in the raging current. Nor can you see the road grader with a shovel standing by, ready to push stuck cars out of the muck before they get washed over the edge. There’s a change-of-shorts stop about 1km up the road…..

As soon as you reach the top of the pass on Ruta 33 and the Cuesta del Obispo (“The Bishop’s Slope”) valley you suddenly hit the vast altiplano high desert of Salta, Argentina.  At over 9,000ft and endless views to the horizon, it literally and figuratively takes your breath away. it’s like a whole different world from the lush tropical rainforest you just came through. And within minutes, from zig-zag and harrowing washouts on dirt roads, to straight as an arrow. Dry as a bone.

Wide. Open

Just stunningly beautiful. And 9,000ft above sea level.

Such a contrast to the wet rainy dangerous road 20 minutes before

Hey buddies!

Rush Hour on the altiplano. Not much else going on but a long straight roads, cacti, scrub and distant mountains. And hardly anybody else.

Views so vast, it takes your breath away

At the end of Ruta 33 is the dusty town of Cachi. I mean it is a dusty Andean town. There are a couple of nice places to stay there, but I kept pressing on toward Estancia Colomé. From Cachi, you turn south and join up with the famous Ruta 40, the tip-to-tail five thousand mile dirt road that dates back to Inca times and follows the spine of the Andes down to Patagonia. You hit dusty mountain towns like Cachi, outposts like in a Spaghetti Western, and then go south along the Andes, fording rivers along the way. My goal was the Estancia Colome, many kilometers outside the small town of Molinos, stay a few days at this magical place and it’s James Turrell Museum and then head south to the wine town of Cafayete.

It is just hard to comprehend the vastness

Google Ruta 40 and you’ll read all sorts of stories, some of them horror stories, about this famous long road down the spine of Argentina

Around every corner is a different sort of geology

Ruta 40. One of the longest, gnarliest highways in the world. Runs the entire length of Argentina, over 5,000km from tip to tail, Bolivia down to the sea in Patagonia. It’s at some of its wildest in Salta, where it’s less a highway than a rutted road, running through dusty Andes towns, fording rivers and scant gas stations. I hooked up with it in Cachi on my way to Molinos and it’s a slow ride, not just because of the rocky roads and bridgeless rivers to cross, but because there’s something amazing to stop and see nearly every other kilometer. Bring cheese.

Up in Salta on Ruta 40 sometimes “highway” is just an expression. “Route” seems to work.

Like a New York sidewalk, there’s One of Everything going by every five minutes along Ruta 40 in Salta. Except rocks, instead of people.

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Here’s a great article in Travel & Leisure.