The Inca salt pans, or the Salineras of Maras, are one of the least visited but the most compelling of the ancient sites in Peru's Sacred Valley.
The Salineras de Maras, or Inca salt pans have been used for centuries. They are allotted to the citizens of Maras and each one gets a certain number of the plots to which they keep the profits of the salt that is packaged out and sold. Families pass the plots down from generation to generation like heirlooms.
The site is stunning. It is fifty-eight kilometers from Cusco in an isolated part of the valley. It consists of thousands of mismatched white squares plotted along a steep green to brown hillside. It comes out of nowhere really.
The workers can be seen on any given day doing the exhausting extraction process that is surely hard on their back. The small plots are filled with water and upon evaporation a crystallization process takes place and salt can be panned out.
You can get the Salineras several ways. There is no local transportation so you must go with the many tour groups that leave from Cusco on full day tours of the Sacred Valley, by taxi, by horse, or by foot.
There is a small admission fee of five soles, although you get in free with your Boleto Turistico from Cusco.
A trip to the Salineras is usually paired with a stop at Moray. The archeological site is a series of circular terraces that are thought to have been used as an agricultural experimentation center by the Incas. Each level, or terrace, was used for a different crop perhaps based on the altitude that created a series of microclimates at the site.
