Salta is a fair-sized city, we really liked it a lot. Our hotel was centrally located, and the room was huge. The roads were paved, everything was clean, and people were friendly. Most days we walked around town, thru parks, in and out of museums and always to a steak dinner. We extended our stay. We saw churches, got our laundry done and discovered empanadas and Argentinian wine. Then we planned the rest of our Argentinian journey.

One of the must do’s in Salta is to visit the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology (MAAM). It details the discovery of three children who were tributes to the gods. They were frozen, in place, 500 years ago on Llullaillaco, Argentina. There are three mummies are exhibited in rotating fashion, so as not to expose any of the mummies for too long a time at once. Mummies are typically rotated in the exhibit every six months.

Llullaillaco is a potentially active stratovolcano at the border of Argentina (Salta Province) and Chile. It lies in the Puna de Atacama, a region of very high volcanic peaks on a high plateau within the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places in the world. It is the fourth highest volcano in the world, and it is also the seventh highest mountain of the Andes. It has been confirmed that Incas climbed Llullaillaco in the pre-Columbian period. Artifacts on the summit constitute the highest evidence of human presence worldwide.

The mummies are those of a teenage girl, nicknamed La doncella (“the maiden”), a young boy, and a six-year-old girl, nicknamed La niña del rayo (“the lightning girl”). The latter’s nickname reflects the fact that sometime during the 500-year period the mummy spent on the summit, it was struck by lightning, partially burning the preserved body and some of the ceremonial artifacts left with the mummies.

Next stop: We rented a car to drive to our next stop, an Estancia (horse ranch) about an hours drive to the northeast of Salta.