Across San Luis
The RN 20 is the main artery linking Córdoba with San Juan and is a long, mostly flat crossing of the pampas. The landscape opens up quickly once the road descends from the sierra edge, becoming drier, flatter, and progressively emptier as it crosses into San Luis province.
Quines arrives mid-morning, a market town of around nine thousand people set in the foothills of the sierras of San Luis where the RN 20 meets the RN 79. The town was documented in Spanish records as early as 1779, though its name appears in a land petition by a Captain Sánchez Chaparro decades earlier — the origin of the name, possibly from a Comechingón cacique, remains disputed. It was struck by an earthquake in 1936 that left a mark on the local memory. Every year since 1985, Quines has hosted the Fiesta Nacional del Mate y los Artesanos de la Madera, a reflection of its ties to the forestry economy — the quebrachos of the surrounding hills have long been processed here. It is a serviceable town for a brief stop: coffee, a walk around the plaza.
From Quines the route continues west through the province of San Luis and into the southern tip of San Juan. The landscape by now is desert proper — low scrub, wide skies, and occasional dust. The second fuel stop is at El Encón, a small settlement of a few hundred people on the RN 20 near the San Juan–Mendoza border, at roughly kilometer 470. The town takes its name, according to local tradition, from a Huarpe cacique who held the territory here. Huarpe communities — among them the Clara Rosa Guaquinchay and the Pinkanta — still inhabit the surrounding desert, raising goats and cattle in the dunes and parched outcrops east of the road. A UNESCO prize-winning weaver named Herenia Moyano brought some recognition to the area in 2001. El Encón is little more than a roadside stop today, but it marks the last point in San Juan before the road crosses into Mendoza.