San Antonio de los Cobres → Susques

San Antonio de los Cobres → Susques

Date: Wednesday, April 21, 2027 · Distance: ~106 mi · Driving time: ~4h 15m (excluding stops) · Open in Google Maps

Road surfaces
Unpaved · 58 mi · 55%
Asphalt · 28 mi · 26%
Paved · 18 mi · 17%
Gravel · 2 mi · 2%

There are two ways to reach Susques from San Antonio de los Cobres, and this is the gentler of them — a gravel run across the open puna, a stretch of pavement along the flank of the Salinas Grandes, and an hour spent on one of the great salt deserts of South America before the day settles into Susques, a staging post for tomorrow's crossing into Chile.

Onto the Puna

The 10:00 am departure from San Antonio de los Cobres leaves on the gravel road heading north out of town, fuel taken care of at the start before the services thin out entirely. The road here is remote but well-used — a mining corridor as much as a tourist route — losing altitude gradually as it crosses the open puna, the vegetation reduced to scattered tola bushes and the occasional grazing llama, with volcanic peaks standing at intervals along the horizon. After roughly 96 kilometres of gravel, the road meets Ruta Nacional 52 at a junction near the eastern edge of the Salinas Grandes, and the surface turns to pavement for the remainder of the day.

Salinas Grandes

The salt flat opens without much warning: a white plain stretching to the horizon, ringed by the brown and ochre hills of the puna, at an altitude of roughly 3,450 metres. Salinas Grandes formed over the past 10,000 years as a high-altitude lake evaporated, leaving behind a salt crust that reaches half a metre thick in places — at 212 square kilometres, it ranks among the largest salares in South America, third in Argentina behind the Salar de Arizaro and eclipsed continentally only by Bolivia's vastly larger Salar de Uyuni.

A parador at the edge of the salar serves as the entry point, with parking directly on the crust and a small market selling salt carved into decorative shapes by the families who have worked this salar for generations. Beyond the immediate visitor area, marked tracks lead further into the salar — not advisable to follow without local knowledge, since the crust's thickness and stability vary — and hiring one of the community guides at the parador to drive in a short distance is the standard and recommended way to see the piletones, the shallow turquoise pools where salt is extracted, and the flat, mirror-still lagunas de sal further out. The guides also explain the traditional harvesting process, which has continued largely unchanged for centuries. Sunglasses are not optional here — the glare off the white surface at this altitude is intense enough to damage unprotected eyes within a short time, and the reflected sun burns skin as readily as snow does.

Arrival: Susques

Susques sits at 3,675 metres, at the junction where Ruta 52 meets the gravel trace of Ruta 40 running north–south — a crossroads position that has made the town a waypoint for centuries, long before either route existed as a modern highway. It is a small grid of low adobe houses with the quiet, functional feel of a place built for altitude and passage rather than for lingering, and after two long days of gravel and salt it serves its purpose well: fuel, a bed, and a meal before tomorrow's border crossing at Jama.

If there's time and inclination, the Capilla de Nuestra Señora de Belén on the main street is worth a look — tradition dates its founding to 1598, which would make it the oldest church in Jujuy province, though the earliest surviving documentation places it closer to the 1750s. It's a simple adobe building with a cardón-cactus roof and some faded 19th-century folk paintings inside, but opening hours are irregular and a visit sometimes depends on finding whoever holds the key. The main plaza has a modest artisan market selling llama-wool weavings, and the kitchens in town serve the staples of the high Andes — locro, tamales, chivito, empanadas. An early dinner and an early night make sense here; tomorrow's crossing into Chile is the real business of the trip.