Salt Mine of Maras

This guide to the Salt Mine of Maras, outside Cusco, follows the salty spring that has poured from this hillside since before the Inca, and the Wari farmers who first channeled it into basins over a thousand years ago. You will hear how families from the villages of Maras and Pichingoto still own and work those pools today, flooding and scraping them by hand under a strict local custom about who may ever inherit one. It traces the rhythm of dry season and wet season that decides whether a harvest is worth taking. Look closely at how the color shifts from the top of the slope to the bottom.