The Maras salt pans sit on a hillside in the Sacred Valley, about an hour’s drive from Cusco. Around 4,500 small terraced pools, filled by a mineralised spring, have been evaporating salt here since pre-Inca times — the technique and the ownership structure haven’t changed much.
Each pool belongs to a Maras family, who harvest the salt by hand roughly every three days. The crystals go in three grades: table salt, cooking salt, and the pink mineral salt sold at tourist shops in Cusco.
Visually, the pans are a mosaic of whites and pale pinks against the red hills — more photogenic than a working salt operation has any right to be. Peruways’ day trips combine Maras with Moray (the Inca agricultural terraces nearby, 15 minutes’ drive away) and often the Chinchero weaving village.
Book the Maras–Moray day at Peruways.
