🇦🇷 Argentina · The North (NOA)
Salinas Grandes is one of the most striking landscapes in northern Argentina: an immense desert of white salt at more than 3,400 meters, on the border between Jujuy and Salta. It spreads over some 212 km² (more than 12,000 hectares) and, when you come down off the Cuesta de Lipán and that endless plain appears, glinting under the puna sun, it feels like walking on eternal snow in the middle of the altiplano. The salt crust, divided by nature into perfect polygons, seems to have no end.
To get there you climb from Purmamarca along RN 52, the legendary Cuesta de Lipán, a fully paved cliffside road that snakes up to the Abra de Potrerillos, at about 4,170 m above sea level, before dropping to the salt flat. It's one of the most spectacular high-altitude drives in Argentina, with dizzying views, vicuñas grazing and a viewpoint for photos. Because of the altitude it's best taken slowly: many travelers feel the apunamiento (altitude sickness) and the sun is fierce.
You can't wander the salt flat on your own: to enter the worked area you have to go with guides from the local community, who are the same salineros who extract the salt the traditional way. They show you the crystallization pools and the 'eyes' of water and explain how the salt is 'grown'. But Salinas Grandes is also the setting of a deep conflict: it lies in the so-called 'lithium triangle' and the Kolla and Atacama communities of the basin are resisting lithium mining in defense of their water. Getting to know the salt flat also means looking into that debate, which we cover in more detail on the history page.
Salinas Grandes is what remains of an ancient high-altitude lake basin that, with no outlet to the sea and under a climate of heavy evaporation, precipitated its salts over millions of years until it formed this white crust. For centuries Andean peoples cut salt into blocks and moved it across the puna in llama caravans, and today the Kolla and Atacama communities still work it in cooperatives, while defending their water against lithium mining. All of that, in more detail, is on the history page.
Read the full history ↓The northernmost province, the Andean roof of Argentina: land of the Quebrada de Humahuaca and the Inca road, of the Omaguaca pucarás, of the heroic Jujuy Exodus of 1812 and of the sugar mills, with a living Andean culture of carnival, coplas and seven-colored hills.
Read the history of Jujuy →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Salinas Grandes is what remains of an enormous body of water that existed millions of years ago in the middle of the puna. Its origin is usually placed in a process that unfolded between 5 and 10 million years ago, when this high-altitude basin was covered by water heavy with salts, largely supplied by the region's intense volcanic activity. Over time, the humid climate gave way to an increasingly arid, dry environment, the kind typical of the altiplano.
The key to how it formed is that this is an endorheic basin, that is, a closed basin with no outlet to the sea. The rivers and springs that feed it arrive loaded with dissolved salts (from the surrounding volcanic ground), but the water has nowhere to escape: the only way out is evaporation. Under the intense sun, the dry wind and the huge temperature swings of the puna, the water evaporates and the salts stay behind, concentrating until they saturate and precipitate. Layer upon layer, over an immense span of time, this thick white crust was built up, on average about 30 centimeters deep.
Today the salt flat spreads over some 212 km² (more than 12,000 hectares) across the departments of Cochinoca, in Jujuy, and La Poma, in Salta, at about 3,350-3,450 meters. It works essentially as the base level of a larger endorheic system that continues northwards into Laguna de Guayatayoc, heavily salted and alkaline. That same brine accumulating beneath the crust is what holds the lithium now at the center of the debate.
For millennia salt was a precious commodity in the Andes. It served to preserve meat and fish, to tan hides, for livestock and for human consumption, and so it drove a trade that crossed the mountains and the puna long before the Spanish arrived. The Andean peoples of the region - of Kolla and Atacama roots, at the crossroads between the Quechua-Aymara world and the Atacama desert - extracted salt from flats like this one and carried it in llama caravans over enormous distances, trading it for maize, produce from the valleys and goods from other areas.
Traditional extraction was done by 'growing the salt', a phrase the salineros still use and that says a great deal about how they understand the flat: not as a mine that empties out, but as something alive that regenerates with the rains and the sun. Blocks, or 'panes', of salt were cut straight from the crust for building and for livestock, and the salt that formed again after each rainy season was harvested. That cycle - summer rains that flood the flat, evaporation that makes the salt 'grow' again - still shapes the communities' work today.
Salt extraction is still a central activity for the communities of the flat, today largely organized in cooperatives that bring together men and women from the neighboring villages. These cooperatives, driven by local people themselves, took hold above all from the late 1970s onwards, and in some cases - such as Santuario Tres Pozos - have a history closely bound to the community itself.
The method most visible to visitors is the crystallization pools: rectangles dug into the crust (on the order of 4 meters long by 2.5 wide and about 40 centimeters deep) where brine is placed and left for eight to twelve months, until the water evaporates and the salt crystallizes. Each pool can yield a couple of tonnes of salt, which is then bagged and sold to packing firms. On top of that come block cutting and surface collection. The whole cycle is in step with the seasons: the summer rains (December to March) flood the flat, and the evaporation that follows, with sun and wind, 'grows' the salt again.
In recent decades, tourism has been added to salt: the same people who work the flat act as guides, show the pools and the springs, help with the perspective photos and explain their trade. It's a form of community tourism that leaves income directly in the villages and that coexists, not without tension, with the salt working of always.
Salinas Grandes lies at the heart of the so-called 'lithium triangle', the region shared by Argentina, Chile and Bolivia that holds an enormous share of the world's resources of this mineral. Lithium is key to the batteries in phones, laptops and, above all, electric cars, and demand for it is growing with the global energy transition. Beneath the crust of salt flats like this one there are lithium-rich brines, and for years various mining companies have taken an interest in exploiting them.
On the other side are the Kolla and Atacama indigenous communities who live in the basin and depend on its water for raising livestock, farming and salt extraction itself. Grouped in the assembly of the 33 communities of the Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc basin, they have been resisting lithium mining under a slogan that has become emblematic: 'Water is worth more than lithium'. Their main concern is water: extracting lithium by evaporating brine consumes and disturbs large volumes of water in a desert environment with a very fragile water balance, and they fear irreversible damage to the aquifers. They also argue that their right to free, prior and informed consultation, guaranteed by ILO Convention 169 and the national Constitution, was not respected.
The conflict has a long history in the courts. The communities, together with the Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), took the case to court, and the Supreme Court of Argentina assumed jurisdiction to intervene and requested reports from the national government, Salta and Jujuy on the contracts and possible environmental impacts. In October 2025 the highest court resolved to intervene fully in the dispute over lithium and borate extraction in the area. It's an open debate, with opposing positions worth looking at in their complexity, without reducing it to good guys and bad guys.
Today Salinas Grandes is at once a tourist icon of northern Argentina and a contested territory. Visitors arrive from all over the world, climbing the Cuesta de Lipán to walk on the salt, tour the pools, peer into the springs and take the classic perspective photos on that white vastness. That tourist activity, largely run by the communities themselves through guides and cooperatives, has become an important source of income, alongside salt and livestock.
At the same time, the salt flat has become a national symbol of the debate over lithium, water and indigenous peoples' rights. Touring it with a community guide is therefore much more than a scenic excursion: it means hearing first-hand how the salt is 'grown', what life is like on the puna at more than 3,400 meters and why so many families are defending their water against mining. Visiting Salinas Grandes with respect - hiring local guides, spending money in the villages and understanding the context - is the best way to get to know this extraordinary place.