Jaap van 't Veen's photos with the keyword: Salinas Grandes

From my travel journal (2009) translated with “www.DeepL.com”: We leave Purmamarca and follow Ruta 52. Outside the town there are still beautiful coloured rock formations and lots of flowers (PiP1). As we climb higher and higher, the landscape slowly changes and has just sparse vegetation, with only cacti at the end. At Lipan the road has the first series of hairpin bends (PiP2) of the Cuesta de Lipán (main picture). The surroundings and the views of the Andes mountains are getting more and more impressive. We climb in our car with a reasonable speed, but a few large trucks are crawling up the mountain road. Busses however are more in a hurry and pass us at the most impossible places. After thirty bends and hairpins we arrive on a kind of plateau. Not much later we reach Abra de Potrerillos, a pass at the unbelievable altitude of 4,170 metres above sea level. It is cloudy and therefore freezing cold. With three cars it's a bit busier than on the road. An indigenous woman has displayed her things, hoping to sell something (PiP3). How she got here and where she came from is not clear to us. When we start the descent, the clouds quickly become less and the view better. We look out on a kind of plateau and on several Andes peaks, most of them are covered with snow. In the distance is a small white spot (PiP4): without doubt the salt flats of the Salinas Grandes. We descend with a few big bends and drive through a kind of gorge to a long straight road (PiP5) with always a view on the dazzling white salt plain. It takes a while before we really reach the salt lake (PiP6). But at last there are the Salinas Grandes , as far as the eye can see and that still at an altitude of almost 3,500 meters ….. ….. The way back is on the same road and we climb above 4.000 meters again. The weather is better now and on the pass it is even sunny. We buy a piece of rock from the lonely indigenous woman and make some (new) pictures. At the Cuesta de Lipan low hanging clouds make the descent even more straining. After an incredible adventure of seven hours we are back Purmamarca.

Salinas Grandes is a salt plain with a surface of approximately 220 km2 on the border of the provinces of Jujuy and Salta in northwest Argentina. The salar lies at an elevation of about 3.500 meters above sea level. The origin of Salinas Grandes dates from an extended period of time between 5 and 10 million years ago, when the basin was covered with water with a large amount of salts coming from volcanic activity. The gradual evaporation of such continental saline waters gave rise to this salt having a crust of salt up to 0,5 meters thick. During our visit we saw that salt was still being extracted. Old rusty trucks drove across the plain to bring the extracted salt to a central location. In a kind of settlement with a house of salt blocks, the white and shiny salt was packed in bags by hand under a burning sun !!

Salinas Grandes is a salt flat/lake with a surface of approximately 220 km2 on the border of the provinces of Jujuy and Salta in northwest Argentina. The ‘salar’ lies at an elevation of more than 3.500 metres above sea level. It has a drainage basin extending over 4.600 km2. The origin of Salinas Grandes dates from an extended period of time between 5 and 10 million years ago, when the basin was covered with water with a large amount of salts coming from volcanic activity. The gradual evaporation of such continental saline waters gave rise to this salt having a thick crust.