Salinas Grandes
Interesting facts
- The salt flat began forming some 5 to 10 million years ago, as volcanic salts gathered in a closed basin and saline waters slowly evaporated.
- It covers about 212 square kilometres and has no outlet at all: water leaves only by evaporation.
- To the north it connects with Laguna de Guayatayoc, an alkaline salt lake, while the Sierra del Chañi separates it from the Quebrada de Humahuaca.
- Its surface is split between two provinces and two departments, Cochinoca in Jujuy and La Poma in Salta.
- The salt crust averages around 30 centimetres in thickness, though it is thicker in places.
Why it is worth it
Salinas Grandes is a sheet of white laid across the Puna, the high Andean plateau of northwest Argentina, at about 3,450 metres above sea level. It spans the border of Jujuy and Salta provinces and is one of the largest salt flats in South America: a dead-level crust of salt, in places up to half a metre thick, that stretches away to a rim of brown and violet mountains. The air is thin and dry, the sky an unusual deep blue, and in bright sun the glare off the salt is so strong that the horizon seems to dissolve.
The surface is not perfectly smooth. Drying and recrystallisation crack the crust into a mesh of polygons edged with raised ridges of salt, a pattern that runs on to the edge of sight. Here and there small springs, called the "eyes" of the salt flat, open in the crust, and local salt workers have cut long rectangular pools into it, where brine collects and salt crystallises for harvesting. The pools, filled with water of a startling turquoise against the white, are among the most photographed sights of the flat.
The journey is part of the experience. From the village of Purmamarca, with its famous seven-coloured hill, National Route 52 climbs the Cuesta de Lipán in a long series of switchbacks to a high point of 4,170 metres before dropping onto the Puna, and the road then runs straight across the middle of the salt flat. Salt extraction, for sodium and potassium, has long been part of the local economy, and the lithium brines beneath the crust have drawn exploration, opposed by indigenous communities who fear for the groundwater on which their farming depends.
Getting there
The salt flat lies on National Route 52, about 66 km from Purmamarca and about 131 km by road from San Salvador de Jujuy, whose Gobernador Horacio Guzmán International Airport (JUJ) is the nearest. Guided visits to the extraction pools and the "eyes" start from the visitor centre beside the road.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Salinas Grandes are located in the north in the provinces of Jujuy and Salta, at an average altitude of 3,450 meters above sea level. It covers an area of 212 km2 (82 sq mi) and is well-known for its vast white desert. The desert is about 320 km (200 mi) long.
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