The Andean crossing between the Atacama desert and Salta in the Argentine Andean foothills is the highest and most elemental pass, where sun-bleached arid rock gives way to ice-clad skeletal peaks. A friendly, laid-back but cultured colonial city. Salta, with its graceful baroque architecture and stunning, colourful cathedral, is a great contrast to the vast capital, Buenos Aires. Around it are communities and vestiges of the country’s indigenous population, whose crafts and agricultural practices survive to this day.
From there you’ll fly to the sub-tropical rainforest of Iguazú National Park and survey and explore the monumental Iguazú Falls; 276 separate cascades thundering over a granite precipice. At either end of the holiday there’s time in a historically significant, sophisticated city – Santiago and Buenos Aires.