🇦🇷 Argentina · The North
San Antonio de los Cobres is the capital of the Salta puna: a high-altitude town at almost 3,800 meters above sea level, set in the middle of the Andean altiplano, where the air is thin, the sun intense and the wind a permanent companion. Its name evokes the old copper mining that shaped the region, and everything about it breathes deep Andean roots, with indigenous communities keeping their traditions, their music and their devotion to the Pachamama alive.
The town is famous for being a key point on the route of the legendary Tren a las Nubes, one of the great railway feats in the world, which climbs the Quebrada del Toro from Salta to the imposing La Polvorilla viaduct, near the town. That engineering feat, crossing the puna at more than 4,000 meters over dizzying bridges and viaducts, turned San Antonio de los Cobres into a compulsory stop on high-altitude tourism in northern Argentina.
Getting there is part of the experience: from Salta capital it's about 160 km along RN 51, climbing the spectacular Quebrada del Toro, with a compulsory stop at the pre-Hispanic ruins of Tastil. Beyond the train, the town works as a base for exploring the deep puna: Salinas Grandes, the Abra del Acay on RN 40 (one of the highest road passes in the world) and 4x4 crossings towards Tolar Grande and the Puna de Atacama. One thing though: the weather is cold and windy all year, and the altitude means taking everything slowly, drinking plenty of water and dressing warmly in any season.
The Salta puna, where San Antonio de los Cobres sits, was inhabited from pre-Hispanic times by Andean peoples adapted to life on the altiplano: communities of Atacama roots, as well as peoples tied to Andean culture and, in the last pre-Hispanic stretch, to the Inca Empire, which extended its rule and its roads across the whole region. They were llama herders, salt gatherers on the salt flats and workers of the minerals that abound in the puna. The region was historically a mining zone: its very name, 'de los Cobres' (of the coppers), recalls the copper and other minerals that shaped its economy. Through the colonial period and the 19th century, the puna was a land of grazing, mining and mule-train traffic between the valleys, the altiplano and northern Chile and Bolivia. San Antonio de los Cobres took on particular importance in the 20th century with the building of the Huaytiquina railway (later the C-14 branch line), the astonishing engineering work of the engineer Richard Maury that links Salta with the Chilean border across the puna at great altitude, and which gave rise to the famous Tren a las Nubes. The town established itself as the main settlement of the Salta puna and a nerve center of high-altitude tourist circuits. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Salta la Linda: the colonial jewel of the northwest, Diaguita land of the Calchaquí Valleys, setting of Güemes and his gaucho war, of the high-altitude wines of Cafayate and of the legendary Tren a las Nubes.
Read the history of Salta →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
At almost 3,800 meters above sea level, with air so thin that breathing harder tires you out and a thermometer that can drop several degrees in minutes the moment the sun goes down, there is a town that has been inhabited for more than a thousand years. This is no recent feat nor a tourist whim: the Salta puna, that vast altiplano stretching above 3,500 meters, was the territory of Andean peoples extraordinarily adapted to life at altitude long before Argentina existed, and even before the Incas arrived. In this extreme environment of cold, wind, thin air and scarce water, communities of Atacama and Andean roots developed survival strategies based on herding llamas and other camelids, gathering salt on the salt flats, hunting, farming in the few oases and working the minerals that abound in the region.
For millennia the puna was a space crossed by llama caravans linking the altiplano with the valleys, the Pacific coast and other regions, in an intense exchange of goods: salt, minerals, wool, food and objects. In its last pre-Hispanic stretch, the whole region was absorbed into the Inca Empire, which extended its rule and its road network (the Qhapaq Ñan) across the puna, integrating it into the vast Tawantinsuyu and leaving a deep cultural mark.
The important Tastil ruins, in the nearby Quebrada del Toro, are evidence of the population density and the complexity of the societies that inhabited these heights before the Incas and the Spanish. The Andean roots of the puna — its language, its music, its devotion to the Pachamama, its way of life — survive today in the indigenous communities of San Antonio de los Cobres and of the whole region.
The name San Antonio de los Cobres speaks for itself about one of the keys to its history: mining. The Salta puna is a region rich in minerals, and the working of copper — along with other metals and minerals — shaped the economy and the settlement of the area over the centuries. The 'de los Cobres' (of the coppers) in the name recalls that extractive activity, which drew workers and gave life to settlements on the altiplano.
Since pre-Hispanic times, the Andean peoples already knew and worked the metals of the puna. During the colonial period and, above all, in the 19th and 20th centuries, mining intensified, with the working of copper and other mineral deposits that required labor and generated activity in an otherwise isolated region of scattered population. Mining was, along with herding, one of the pillars of life on the puna.
San Antonio de los Cobres gradually established itself as the reference point for that activity and for life in the Salta puna: a place for supplies, meeting and administration in the middle of the altiplano. The mining imprint, the harshness of working at altitude and the mix of Andean people with workers arriving from elsewhere shaped the identity of this Andean town.
Through the colonial period and the 19th century, the Salta puna was a region of herding, mining and, above all, transit. Across these heights moved the mule trains and llama caravans that linked the northwestern valleys with the Bolivian altiplano and northern Chile, carrying salt from the salt flats, minerals, wool, livestock and all kinds of goods. The puna was one more piece of the old trade routes connecting Tucumán with Upper Peru and the Pacific.
The population of the puna remained mostly of Andean roots, living from herding llamas and sheep, extracting salt, small-scale farming in the oases and mining. Life was hard, marked by isolation, altitude, extreme cold and scarcity, but the communities kept their traditions, their organization and their deep connection with the land and the Andean cycles.
After independence and through the 19th century, the puna was absorbed into Argentine territory, though its remoteness and extreme geography kept it a peripheral, sparsely populated region. San Antonio de los Cobres gradually took hold as the main settlement of the Salta puna, a meeting and supply point in the middle of the altiplano, on the eve of the great transformation the railway would bring in the 20th century.
The great event that transformed San Antonio de los Cobres in the 20th century was the building of the Huaytiquina railway (later known as the C-14 branch line), one of the most astonishing feats of railway engineering in the world. The project set out to link Salta with the Chilean border, crossing the Andes and the puna at great altitude, to connect northern Argentina with the Pacific. Work began in 1921, when president Hipólito Yrigoyen appointed the American engineer Richard Fontaine Maury as head of works, and his name has been tied to the feat ever since: today a station on the line and a village carry his surname.
What's extraordinary about the railway is how it solved the challenge of overcoming enormous height differences without a rack rail: through an ingenious system of switchbacks (where the train goes forward and back to gain height) and spirals (where the track loops over itself), plus viaducts and tunnels crossing ravines and mountains. The most famous point is the imposing La Polvorilla viaduct, completed on 7 November 1932: a curved steel structure 224 meters long, 63 meters high and weighing some 1,590 tonnes, spanning a ravine at more than 4,200 meters, near San Antonio de los Cobres. Maury, however, never saw it opened as head of works: the 1930 coup that overthrew Yrigoyen removed him from the post and halted the works for years.
The whole undertaking took 27 years of brutally hard work at altitude: only in 1948 was the line completed as far as Socompa, on the Chilean border. Decades later, on 16 July 1972, the first Tren a las Nubes tourist service left Salta, running along part of this route and becoming one of the great icons of tourism in northern Argentina. San Antonio de los Cobres was thus bound inseparably to this feat, as the reference town for one of the most impressive train journeys on the planet.
San Antonio de los Cobres is today the main town of the Salta puna and a reference point for the whole altiplano region. At almost 3,800 meters, it's a town with a strong Andean identity, largely inhabited by indigenous communities that keep their traditions, their music, their llama wool crafts and, above all, their deep devotion to the Pachamama, Mother Earth, alive.
The Fiesta de la Pachamama, held especially in August, is one of the most authentic cultural expressions of the Andean world in northern Argentina: ceremonies of offering to the earth, music, dance and traditional food that reaffirm the communities' connection with their surroundings and their worldview. The culture of the puna — the coca, the textiles, the rituals, the language and the Andean cooking — is lived here genuinely, far from any staged tourist postcard.
In recent decades, tourism has grown in importance in the local economy, driven by the Tren a las Nubes and by growing interest in the puna as a destination for adventure and extreme nature. San Antonio de los Cobres works as a base and overnight point for exploring Salinas Grandes, Tolar Grande, the salt flats and the Puna de Atacama, some of the most impressive landscapes in the country. So the town combines its historic mining and herding vocation with a new tourist role, remaining the heart of Andean life in the heights of Salta.