A Visit to the Salt Pans of Maras

Plaza sculpture at Maras

We've been enjoying weekend explorations to some of the many places around the Sacred Valley. We took a fascinating hike last weekend to the Salineras, or salt pans, outside of Urubamba.  Urubamba is only  a 45-minute bus ride down valley from Pisac.  Upon arriving, we found a pleasant guest house aptly named "Los Jardines" (The Gardens), where we dropped our overnight luggage, and got some valuable suggestions from the owner, Raul, then headed down to the bus stop.

Beginning the descent from Maras

Getting to the start of the hike

Although we realized were getting quite a late start (3:00pm), it only took about 45 minutes to get to the trailhead.  First, we hopped on a Cusco-bound bus from Urubamba, asking the driver to let us off at the "desvio" (turnoff) to the small town of Maras.  There, a run-down taxi was waiting, and for a few Peruvian Soles he took us 15 minutes to the beautiful little plaza of Maras, set on top of a vast plateau with panoramic views of the Andes.  Although it was mid-afternoon, there was nobody on the plaza to ask directions. So I wandered over to the Police Station, where the friendly Police Chief shook my hand, and cheerfully sent me off toward the north, to find the trail behind the old adobe church.  Behind the San Francisco church there were several unmarked trails, but after some debate, we chose to follow the "acequia" (aqueduct) around the hill, where we hit the main trail (also unmarked) down to the Salineras.

As we plodded down the heavily eroded horse trail, we passed pairs and trios of young kids herding the family burros and cows up and down the trail. They assured us the salt pans were only about 45 minutes away, though we took twice that. The clouds cleared and the sun turned up the heat. Farm families worked in their corn fields and hawks soared overhead. More groups of burros passed by. Much of the time we were completely on our own, with no one to ask if we were still on the right path. We passed remote homesteads surrounded by beautiful green fields of young corn, seeing young kids keeping an eye on a team of oxen at rest. We saw no other foreigners on the hike. Then we met coming up a friendly old cowboy on a beautiful strong horse; he was tickled that a North American family with kids were passing through his territory. His boys listened to pop music on their cell phone as they herded the burros up the steep trail.


The trail switchbacked down into the canyon, and as we came around the corner, suddenly the salt came into view. Wow! You can hardly imagine the sight of some 5000 salt pans, blazing white, in the middle of a reddish canyon slope.




It's quite a touristy place actually, but at this point, around 4:30pm, most of the crowds were gone, and we had a feeling of having the place almost to ourselves.  As we tiptoed carefully along narrow, salt-covered pathways through the salt works, we were constantly saying wow! and check this out!, asking each other questions about how they were able to produce so much salt for so many centuries (since pre-Inca times we were told).  

Though they were selling small  bags of salt at the gift shop, we opted to toss a handful into our pocket. Beautiful, totally unprocessed mineral salts, evaporated in small basins and scooped up daily for export all over the world.


The steep descent finally flattens out,  reaching a bridge over the Rio Urubamba.  We made it back to the highway just at dusk, and flagged down a taxi back to Urubamba. Round trip was about 3 hours.