The Maras salt pans — the Salineras de Maras — sit in the hills about 40 km from Cusco, above the Sacred Valley. Local families have harvested salt here since Inca times from a saline spring that drains into roughly 4,500 shallow terraced pools.
Peruways runs day trips from Cusco that pair Maras with Moray (the circular agricultural terraces) and Chinchero. At Maras you can walk between the terraces on the narrow stone paths and watch families scraping salt into bags — the harvest is still done entirely by hand, and the pools are still allocated the way they were 500 years ago.
The salt itself — pink Maras salt — is now sold internationally as a finishing salt. On-site there’s a small shop where the salt is sold cheaply and the money goes to the harvesting families directly. Our guides explain the ownership system (cooperative, inherited, strictly rotational) and the economics.
Book a Maras tour with Peruways. We bundle it with Moray and lunch in Urubamba for a full Sacred Valley day.
