Salinas Grandes and Purmamarca

This day of our trip falls into my top three favorite experiences from all of our South American travels. We saw some of the most beautiful sights all jam packed into one long day.

Our guide, Billy Smith (Argentine born with parents of English lineage), guided us and one other guy who was traveling solo through the northern part of the province of Salta and into the province of Jujuy, the northernmost province in Argentina bordering on Bolivia. He spoke British English and obviously perfect Spanish, and told us he'd never been back to the mother land of England in all his 70 (or so) years. He was an excellent guide and took lots of time to describe every view and all the area’s history. Jeff and I both agreed that this was one of the best days of our entire trip in Argentina. The tour was officially called Salinas Grandes, because its end destination is the huge salt flat located outside of the town of Jujuy. There are other major salt flats in this area, including San Pedro de Atacama in Chile and Salar Uyuni in Bolivia, the largest of the three. The Salinas in Argentina are the smallest, but they were still a gorgeous part of our tour of northwest Argentina.

At the beginning of our trip, we followed the famous Train to the Clouds (Tren a los Nubes) which cuts through the foothills and into the Andes. We stopped at several points to watch it go through some of the scenery before we diverged from the train tracks and headed for San Antonio de los Cobres, a tiny pueblo extremely high in altitude (3700m) where we stopped for lunch. We cut through some very bumpy and dusty dirt roads for a couple hours until we got to the Salinas.

This cactus is probably over 600 years old

cactus wood bicycle

Mountain ruins, the former home of a population of over 2500

Shrine to the Pachamama (Mother Earth) where people leave their favorite drinks (juices, liquor, including a bottle of 92% alcohol - yikes) for the Pachamama

Typical home in San Antonio de los Cobres

Llamas!

Las Salinas Grandes

This cut-out shows the water level beneath the salt. During the rainy season (Nov-March) the water rises above the salt and looks like a huge reflecting pool.

mad ups

piles of salt, which will soon be table salt

quickest drop in altitude (about 2500m over 30km)

army of cacti in front of a hill that's yellow from sulfur content

iron-rich red mountain in front of a copper-rich green mountain

Purmamarca

After the Salinas, we took a short trip over to Purmamarca to see the Seven Colored Hill. This has got to be one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life. The town is tiny and sits directly under the hill, across from a huge mountain, green from copper deposits. We had brought all of our gear and had Billy drop us off to spend the night here in Purmamarca before we headed further north to the border with Bolivia.

Billy took us to a lovely hostal, where we had more of the typical Northwest Argentine/Bolivian fare of Cazuela (this time with llama) for Jeff and locro for me. We watched some local performers sing and play guitar for us and headed to bed before our early morning trip to Bolivia. We hadn’t expected to love this part of the country so much, but overall it has been one of the best parts of the trip.

Seven Colored Hill in Purmamarca

Feria in Purmamarca

Copper Mountain