Maras Salt Ponds

A spring emerges high in a ravine above the Urubamba carrying water so saline it cannot be drunk, and for centuries the response has been to channel it into terraced pans cut into the hillside - around 4,500 of them - let the sun evaporate the water, and scrape the salt. The pans belong to families of the local communities, allocated and inherited, and the system is worked cooperatively with each holder maintaining their own pond and the shared channels. From above the effect is a mosaic of white, ochre and pink squares stepping down the slope, the colour depending on how far each pan has evaporated. Salt is sold at the site, including the pink coarse variety marketed as Maras salt. Since 2019 visitors have not been allowed to walk among the pans, which had been damaging them, and viewing is from a platform.

History

The salt pans are of pre-Hispanic origin, about 4,500 wells set in steps down the slope at 3,200 metres, each about five square metres in area and thirty centimetres deep, with walls of rough stone and clay. A saline spring at the top feeds a main channel that branches into smaller ones to fill the wells (Wikipedia, Salt Mines of Maras).

The main sights

• The pans - around 4,500 terraced evaporation ponds down a ravine.
• The colours - white through ochre to pink depending on the stage of evaporation.
• The family system - ponds allocated to and inherited within local households.
• The spring - saline water emerging above and channelled through the whole site.

When to go

April to October; in the rains the pans are flooded and drained rather than worked, and the colours are muted. One to two hours, generally with Moray.

Good to know

Walking among the pans is no longer permitted - viewing is from a platform, which frustrates people expecting the classic close-up photographs. Busy with coaches in the middle of the day. Hot and glaring with no shade. Persistent selling at the entrance.

Nearby

Moray is nearby; Urubamba and the Sacred Valley are below.

Key facts