Everyone flies to Patagonia. The northwest is where Argentina actually surprised us — a high-desert corner of adobe villages, cardón cactus forests, and rock walls striped like someone dragged a paintbrush through fourteen shades of red. Best of all, you can do the whole thing from one base city on cheap local buses.
Start in Salta
Salta la Linda earns the nickname. Give it two nights: the pink cathedral on Plaza 9 de Julio, a peña dinner in the Balcarce district where the folk singers work the tables, and the MAAM museum, which houses the Inca children found frozen on the summit of Llullaillaco. It is quietly devastating and worth the ARS entry (about USD 5). Dorm beds run USD 10–14; empanadas salteñas cost under a dollar each and you will eat six.
South to Cafayate
The 4-hour bus to Cafayate (around USD 10 with Flecha Bus or Ale Hermanos) is the best transport day of the loop. It threads the Quebrada de las Conchas, past formations called the Amphitheatre and the Devil's Throat — ask the driver to let you photograph from the roadside stops if you rent a car instead; on the bus, grab a right-side window seat. Cafayate itself is a sleepy grid of wine bodegas pouring torrontés, a floral white grape that grows almost nowhere else at this altitude. Tastings are USD 3–8, and several bodegas are walkable from the plaza. Try the wine-flavoured ice cream on the square; it sounds like a gimmick and is genuinely good.
The back road through Cachi
From Cafayate, the adventurous route to Cachi runs up Ruta 40 through Molinos — gravel most of the way, so this leg is easiest with a shared remis or a rental car (about USD 45–55/day split between a group). Cachi sits at 2,280 m under the snow-capped Nevado, all white adobe and cobbles, and the drive back down to Salta crosses the Cuesta del Obispo through a national park of giant cacti. If you skip the rental, just bus back to Salta from Cafayate and take the daily bus to Cachi as a side trip.
North into the Quebrada de Humahuaca
Back in Salta, hop a bus north (2.5–3 hours, USD 8–10) to Purmamarca, the village under the Cerro de los Siete Colores. Walk the short Paseo de los Colorados loop at 8 a.m. before the tour vans arrive — the hill really does glow seven distinct colours in low light. If you have a spare half day, share a car up to the Salinas Grandes salt flats (USD 15–20 per person).
Another 40 minutes north, Tilcara is the backpacker hub of the gorge: hostels from USD 9, a reconstructed pre-Inca hilltop fort called the Pucará, and a dusty two-hour walk to the Garganta del Diablo waterfall. End the line in Humahuaca, higher and colder at 2,940 m, where a llama stew at a comedor costs USD 4 and the monument to the independence wars towers over tin-roofed lanes.
When to go and what it costs
April to November is the dry season; winter nights drop below freezing but days are bright and stable. Avoid January and February, when summer rains wash out the gravel roads. Budget USD 30–40 a day staying in dorms and eating at markets. Buses are frequent enough that we never booked more than a day ahead, except around Carnival in February, when the entire quebrada erupts in one of Argentina's wildest street parties and beds vanish for weeks.
