Peru: The Salt Mines of Maras

Above the Sacred Valley near the town of Urubamba is a beautiful high plateau that one crosses in order to get to Cuzco. On the edge of this plateau is a tiny town called Maras, and it is known for it's salt mines. Years ago in Poland i had visited some incredible old salt mines hundreds of feet underground where the miners, over many years, had built a series of chapels and ballrooms complete with polished floors, large statues and salt chandeliers. They even had a primitive wave machine in a lake room to create neat light patterns on the wall high above. So i really wanted to go see these Peruvian salt mines.

The town of Urubamba. Those are glaciers on the high mountain ridge.

In between Cuzco and the Sacred Valley is this vast high plateau. It was exceptionally pretty. In fact it was driving me insane because i saw photos everywhere but we blew past everything in a cab. 

A salt farmer bags up his harvest for the day.

To call them mines is a misnomer. It's really a salt farm. On the hillside is a spring of especially salty water. The "miners" simply direct the water into a myriad of shallow pools, where it evaporates, leaving the salt behind. Then they scrape it off the ground and put it in bags. This has been going on since before the times of the Incans, and i have learned that the operation has traditionally been a communal project. A very simple activity that results in a complex landscape.

You can see crystals forming on the surface. Though the water is from the same source and the pools are only a few inches deep, they are oddly different colors.

Child labor. Horrible. Actually the kid was just hanging out while his dad worked in the photo above.

The stream was diverted into these small channels that flowed ever so slightly downhill. The channels would at certain points feed into sets of pools. Once they were filled with water the flow was cut off by simply placing a rock or bottle in the opening.

Women returning from lunch 

 This is what you end up with after hundreds of years. The pools stretched on for a long way.

According to wikipedia any potential salt farmer can participate. They just have to talk to a local informal co-op, learn how to properly maintain the pools, and find a dry or unused pond.