Villa Unión → Fiambalá

Villa Unión → Fiambalá

Date: Friday, April 16, 2027 · Distance: ~243 mi · Driving time: ~6h 15m (excluding stops) · Open in Google Maps

Road surfaces
Asphalt · 171 mi · 71%
Paved · 43 mi · 18%
Ground · 23 mi · 9%
Unknown · 4 mi · 2%
Concrete · 1 mi · 1%

A day that moves through several distinct worlds — the red canyon corridor of the Cuesta de Miranda, the mining legacy of Chilecito, the long flat run south through Catamarca, and finally the dunes of Tatón before camp. The road south through Catamarca is long and mostly straight, but the morning and the evening bookend it well.

The Cuesta de Miranda

The 8:00 am departure from Villa Unión heads east on Ruta Nacional 40, leaving the Talampaya basin behind as the road begins to climb into the Sierra de Famatina. The Cuesta de Miranda comes quickly — within half an hour the road is already on the mountain, threading 80 curves across 32 km of corniche through one of the most visually arresting passes on the entire Ruta 40 corridor.

The Cuesta follows the Río Miranda through a narrow canyon where the geology is stripped bare: ochres and crimsons and dusty carmines in the exposed cliff faces, cardón cactus rising from the rock at intervals, and the river far below catching the morning light. The road crests at around 2,020 metres at the Punto Alto, from which the canyon extends in both directions and the distant smudge of the Talampaya formations is just visible to the west on a clear morning. Cóndors are frequently seen riding the thermals above the upper ridgelines — the pass sits within a recognised flight corridor for the species, and early morning is the best time. The descent on the eastern side drops into the Valle de Famatina, a broad agricultural valley of walnut groves and vineyards that announces Chilecito from several kilometres out.

Chilecito — The Cablecarril

Chilecito is the second city of La Rioja province, a compact town of around 45,000 people in the shadow of the Nevado de Famatina — a peak that rises to 6,250 metres and retains snow year-round, making it the highest mountain range in the world outside the main Andean cordillera. The city's history is inseparable from the mountain above it, and specifically from the gold and copper ore that was extracted from the Mina La Mejicana at 4,600 metres on its flank.

The Estación I "Chilecito" — Cablecarril Mina La Mejicana sits on the northern approach to the city on Ruta 40, and is the starting point of one of the great engineering achievements of early 20th-century South America. Built between 1903 and 1905 and designed by the German firm Adolf Bleichert & Co. of Leipzig, the cablecarril stretched 35 kilometres from this station up the Famatina to the mine at 4,600 metres, climbing 3,500 metres of altitude across nine stations in the process. At its inauguration it was the longest and highest aerial ropeway in the world — a record that may still stand, as similar structures built subsequently at greater altitude have since been dismantled. The entire fabrication was done in Leipzig, shipped to Rosario, and transported by rail to Chilecito before being assembled on the mountain by around 1,600 workers using mules and donkeys to carry materials up the slopes. It operated until 1927, when the departure of the English mining concessionaires after World War I made the economics unworkable.

Station 1 houses a small mining museum — machinery, documentary photographs, and the original cable infrastructure — and the aerial cables can be seen emerging from the station and climbing away toward the invisible upper stations on the Famatina. It is enough to register the scale of the thing. Fuel at the Shell station just down the road before heading north.

North to Tinogasta

From Chilecito the route follows Ruta Nacional 78 north through the Valle de Famatina, leaving the mountain behind as the valley broadens and flattens into the characteristic open scrubland of Catamarca province. The road is good and the distances are straightforward. Tinogasta arrives by early afternoon — a quiet regional town of adobe and low buildings on the Río Abaucán, useful primarily as the junction point for the roads south to Fiambalá and the Paso San Francisco. Lunch on the plaza before the final push.

Dunas de Tatón

North of Fiambalá on Ruta Provincial 34, the landscape changes abruptly. The road passes through Medanitos on asphalt, then turns onto a dirt track that leads across 30 kilometres of open terrain to the dune complex at Tatón. What appears from the approach to be simply a large dune field resolves, on arrival, into something considerably more imposing: the Duna Federico Kirbus, named for the Argentine adventurer and journalist who measured and documented it, rises 1,234 metres from base to crest to reach a summit elevation of 2,845 metres above sea level — by the most commonly cited measure, the highest sand dune in the world.

There is no entrance fee and no guide required — you drive the TR4 directly onto the dunes. The face itself is at roughly 45 degrees, steep enough to require commitment, and the reward at the top is the view: the dune drops away sharply on the far side into a dry valley, the Andes rise as a continuous wall to the west with peaks above 6,000 metres visible in multiple directions, and the silence at this altitude on a windless afternoon is absolute. Sandboards can be rented in Fiambalá town before heading out — driving up and boarding down is the obvious combination.

Arrival: Fiambalá

Fiambalá is a small town at 1,550 metres in the Departamento Tinogasta, sitting at the foot of the cordillera where Ruta Nacional 60 begins its climb west toward the Paso San Francisco and the Chilean border. The Pianwalla — "penetration into the high mountain" in the language of the Cacano people who inhabited this valley before the Spanish — is the name the original inhabitants gave to this place, and it remains apt: Fiambalá is the last town before serious altitude. The Termas de Fiambalá, 15 kilometres north on the road to Tatón, are the morning's plan. Tonight is camp.