NW Argentina - high and dry

Recently arrived from the lush tropical rain forests in SE Asia, we feel the stark contrast in NW Argentina. We've been driving with my brother Alejo to explore Argentina's top left corner. We climbed up to 4200m over sea level. The areas in high altitude have very little vegetation, but the landscape is very colorful due to the minerals in the soil. The mountains are said to have 7 colors. We saw green, yellow, red, purple, brown, and a few others if we are pressed to get to 7. The picture is in Salinas Grandes, a salt lake at an altitude of almost 4000m. A flat expanse, white checker board of crusted salt panels. To extract the salt, they make small pools by breaking the thin (but hard) crust. There's salty water a couple of inches under the top layer. There's a line of little pools behind Simon. No vegetation to be seen around here. Just white salt and blue sky. Everything very bright, so we applied lots of sunscreen.
We plan to explore a little before year-end. Mercedes