Of all the seasonings, herbs and spices man has found to put on food to make it taste better, salt is the most essential. Skip the parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme along with the black pepper and achiote (random, I know...) but don't skip the salt. Not only does it enhance the flavor of pretty much everything, it's also vital for good human health. Low amounts of salt in the human body have been linked to unhealthy levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. We have to have salt in our diets in some way and some foods just don't contain enough so we have to add it from elsewhere.
And yes, of course, too much and...maybe not so good for the blood pressure.
And yes, of course, too much and...maybe not so good for the blood pressure.
Salt is easy to get a hold of if you live near the coast. Just capture some seawater and evaporate the liquid to leave the salt behind. But how do you get some if you live in the Andes? Well I guess that involves mining (salts are trapped underground by long ago evaporations of seas and lakes), which is a whole lot more work, or stumbling across a stream that has salt in it and finding a way to extract the salt from the water like they do at the beach. And that's exactly what the Incas and their ancestors did at a place called Maras, about a 45 minute or so drive from Cusco.
I am fascinated by how mankind processes food. The simpler the product, the more I am intrigued. And salt has to be one of the simplest but most necessary foods out there. So with a free day at our disposal at the end of our epic Peru trip, I had to take a trip out to Maras to see how salt is farmed in the Andes. Had to!
The town of Maras sits within the Maras District of Peru and it's pretty remote. There are a mere 7,500 or so people living out there in about 53 or so square miles. Most of these people to us seemed to be concentrated in the town center area, which is marked by a series of large but seemingly run down or abandoned mansion sized houses with elaborately carved door frames at their entrances.
The place where the salt is farmed is just a bit north of town in a clay valley. Take the winding road to the salineras and you will come across about the most gorgeous mostly brown landscape I have ever laid my eyes on. At the bottom of the canyon is a series of maybe 3,000 or so mostly rectangular pools of water subdivided with walls, paths and channels to make a giant farm where salt is extracted seemingly from the very Earth itself.
Nobody knows how long these pools have been here. And by nobody I mean I couldn't find it on the internet and Paul, our guide for the day, didn't know either. Paul did offer the opinion that maras might mean salt and mentioned that the Quechua (the language of the Incas) word for salt was kachi. That fact seemed to indicate to him that the site pre-dates the Incas, meaning before 1425 or so. He then dropped a potential origin date of 1000 to 1500 B.C. That's a long time to be farming salt.
Who knows whether the information in the previous paragraph is true or not. I couldn't find any information to refute it. Still, take it with a grain of, well, you know...
So how's this whole thing work? Well, first you find a stream that's flowing out of a mountain that tastes salty. And not salty like the sea. Not fishy. And not rotten egg / sulfur smelling salty or laden with iron salty due to those chemicals being present in some mined salts. No. I mean salty, like fresh water mixed with a little salt ripe for the harvesting. Like the stream flowing out of the southwest corner of the canyon near Maras. Yes, we tasted. And yes, it didn't taste like seawater. It tasted like water in the kitchen that's been salted. Seawater makes me choke sometimes it's got so much salt in it; the salt stream at the salineras de Maras did not.
Oh, and it helps if the stream you find will run for like a couple of three or four thousand years. If you are going to set something up on this scale, it better be worth it.
Stream coming out of mountain. Got that? Good. Not so easy to find but they got one at Maras.
The evaporation part is simple. Just isolate some of the running water into an area where the water can lie still and let it bake in the sun. Eventually, all the water will be sucked away and you'll be left with some salt. Just don't do it so much in the rainy season. Sound simple enough?
How about some questions.
What's the right substrate for the pools so the water doesn't all just leak out? Or soak into the dirt on the bottom and sides? How do you get the water easily and efficiently from a running stream into a still pool? How do you get to the pools to harvest the salt? And when you've got a thick layer of salt sitting in a mud rectangle (or close enough) how do you scrape it all up without getting a whole bunch of soil in there so that folks will want to season their food with it. Salt: good. Dirt: not so good.
The Andean people who've been living in Maras for a long long time figured all this out.
An ideal material to form the bottom and sides of each pool is clay. It holds water pretty well and as luck would have it, there's a whole hillside of it in the canyon wall facing the pools. We could hear the SLAP! SLAP! slapping of men extracting and then softening the clay while we were there. The pools are resurfaced on the bottom after each harvest.
To get the water to each pool, you just need a complicated web of canals and sub-canals to feed each and every pool. So that's exactly what's been built. Each pool also has a key or piece of stone wedged into a small channel at its edge which can be removed to allow the constantly flowing water to seep into the empty (and fully prepared for holding salt water) clay-lined rectangle. All full? Replace the stone key and lock out new water, allowing it to continue to serve other pools.
After about a week or so (or three to four weeks during the rainy season), you'll have yourself a cake of salt on a mud bed. Get to it by walking along the walkways which resemble balance beams in some spots and start harvesting, which you do in three levels.
The first level of salt at the top is fine and can be used in your typical household salt shaker. The level below that is courser; if it were in France it would be called fleur de sel or flower of salt. You can pick up almost 9 oz. of this stuff at Williams-Sonoma for $14.95 plus tax and shipping. Here in the Andes it's called flor de sal and at Maras it costs 2 Soles for a whole 9 oz. In case you are comparison shopping, 2 Soles is about 60 cents.
The third and bottom layer is the stuff that's got the clay in it and it's just not suitable for consumption at the dinner table so it's reserved for medical use according to Paul. We didn't ask what medical use. We were far more interested in the food thing.
A typical harvest from one of these family-owned pools yields about 50 to 60 pounds of salt. It doesn't seem like it should be that much but volume is deceiving sometimes. There's a refinery or factory of some sort directly on site which bags the salt into pouches weighing a few ounces to sacks weighing 50 kilograms.
Some advanced planning, a little work preparing the beds, a week or month or so of waiting, a harvest and some processing gets you salt. In a part of the world completely separated from the ocean by miles and miles across and up. This place was pretty incredible to see. It's so simple and ingenious. It's just science at its most basic level. I would have loved to have seen someone figure this whole thing out.
At one time in human history, salt was worth a fortune. Those mansions I mentioned earlier in the town of Maras? All financed by their salt operation. Those fancy carved door frames? Symbols of their affluence and wealth. So what happened?
Well obviously salt is no longer as valuable as it once was. Now it's a commodity, not a luxury item. We can get more than a pound and a half of salt for about a buck fifty at our local Safeway store whenever we want (ironically still more expensive than what we picked up at Maras, although it's admittedly a quicker trip to Safeway). There's never been a run on salt at the store based on a pending shortage that I know of.
But according to Paul, Maras was a victim of a vicious rumor that alleged the salt from that location caused the growth of goiters (of all things). People stayed away and got their salt elsewhere and the wealth of the town collapsed, leaving those once impressive mansions looking like they do today, abandoned in the middle of a very harsh climate but still radiating a little piece of their faded glory. As with all of Paul's stories, our fact-checking proved useless so those grains of salt I alluded to earlier? Take a lot of them.
 |
| The salineras de Maras. The most gorgeous brown landscape I've ever seen. |
The place where the salt is farmed is just a bit north of town in a clay valley. Take the winding road to the salineras and you will come across about the most gorgeous mostly brown landscape I have ever laid my eyes on. At the bottom of the canyon is a series of maybe 3,000 or so mostly rectangular pools of water subdivided with walls, paths and channels to make a giant farm where salt is extracted seemingly from the very Earth itself.
Nobody knows how long these pools have been here. And by nobody I mean I couldn't find it on the internet and Paul, our guide for the day, didn't know either. Paul did offer the opinion that maras might mean salt and mentioned that the Quechua (the language of the Incas) word for salt was kachi. That fact seemed to indicate to him that the site pre-dates the Incas, meaning before 1425 or so. He then dropped a potential origin date of 1000 to 1500 B.C. That's a long time to be farming salt.
Who knows whether the information in the previous paragraph is true or not. I couldn't find any information to refute it. Still, take it with a grain of, well, you know...
 |
| The first pool. The rock in the lower left just above the stream is a key. |
Oh, and it helps if the stream you find will run for like a couple of three or four thousand years. If you are going to set something up on this scale, it better be worth it.
Stream coming out of mountain. Got that? Good. Not so easy to find but they got one at Maras.
The evaporation part is simple. Just isolate some of the running water into an area where the water can lie still and let it bake in the sun. Eventually, all the water will be sucked away and you'll be left with some salt. Just don't do it so much in the rainy season. Sound simple enough?
How about some questions.
What's the right substrate for the pools so the water doesn't all just leak out? Or soak into the dirt on the bottom and sides? How do you get the water easily and efficiently from a running stream into a still pool? How do you get to the pools to harvest the salt? And when you've got a thick layer of salt sitting in a mud rectangle (or close enough) how do you scrape it all up without getting a whole bunch of soil in there so that folks will want to season their food with it. Salt: good. Dirt: not so good.
 |
| The edge of the salineras with the clay cliff beyond. |
 |
| More salt pools. The one with the wavy lines is in the process of being prepared for filling. |
An ideal material to form the bottom and sides of each pool is clay. It holds water pretty well and as luck would have it, there's a whole hillside of it in the canyon wall facing the pools. We could hear the SLAP! SLAP! slapping of men extracting and then softening the clay while we were there. The pools are resurfaced on the bottom after each harvest.
To get the water to each pool, you just need a complicated web of canals and sub-canals to feed each and every pool. So that's exactly what's been built. Each pool also has a key or piece of stone wedged into a small channel at its edge which can be removed to allow the constantly flowing water to seep into the empty (and fully prepared for holding salt water) clay-lined rectangle. All full? Replace the stone key and lock out new water, allowing it to continue to serve other pools.
After about a week or so (or three to four weeks during the rainy season), you'll have yourself a cake of salt on a mud bed. Get to it by walking along the walkways which resemble balance beams in some spots and start harvesting, which you do in three levels.
The first level of salt at the top is fine and can be used in your typical household salt shaker. The level below that is courser; if it were in France it would be called fleur de sel or flower of salt. You can pick up almost 9 oz. of this stuff at Williams-Sonoma for $14.95 plus tax and shipping. Here in the Andes it's called flor de sal and at Maras it costs 2 Soles for a whole 9 oz. In case you are comparison shopping, 2 Soles is about 60 cents.
The third and bottom layer is the stuff that's got the clay in it and it's just not suitable for consumption at the dinner table so it's reserved for medical use according to Paul. We didn't ask what medical use. We were far more interested in the food thing.
 |
| The main tourist path with pools on both side. The woman on the right is cleaning salt layer three from a pool. |
Some advanced planning, a little work preparing the beds, a week or month or so of waiting, a harvest and some processing gets you salt. In a part of the world completely separated from the ocean by miles and miles across and up. This place was pretty incredible to see. It's so simple and ingenious. It's just science at its most basic level. I would have loved to have seen someone figure this whole thing out.
At one time in human history, salt was worth a fortune. Those mansions I mentioned earlier in the town of Maras? All financed by their salt operation. Those fancy carved door frames? Symbols of their affluence and wealth. So what happened?
Well obviously salt is no longer as valuable as it once was. Now it's a commodity, not a luxury item. We can get more than a pound and a half of salt for about a buck fifty at our local Safeway store whenever we want (ironically still more expensive than what we picked up at Maras, although it's admittedly a quicker trip to Safeway). There's never been a run on salt at the store based on a pending shortage that I know of.
But according to Paul, Maras was a victim of a vicious rumor that alleged the salt from that location caused the growth of goiters (of all things). People stayed away and got their salt elsewhere and the wealth of the town collapsed, leaving those once impressive mansions looking like they do today, abandoned in the middle of a very harsh climate but still radiating a little piece of their faded glory. As with all of Paul's stories, our fact-checking proved useless so those grains of salt I alluded to earlier? Take a lot of them.
We looked pretty hard for a way to fill our free day in the Andes. We considered a trek to the Rainbow Mountain which seemed to leave way too early (like 4 a.m.), involve too much hiking (like a couple of hours) at too high an altitude (like 13,000 plus feet above sea level). We also almost bit at a condor watching expedition before realizing it involved a similar start time and about as much walking in as hostile an environment as the Rainbow Mountain deal. When I saw photographs of the brown pools of Maras I knew we had to go there. It's not often in life I'm drawn to brown but it happens sometimes and sometimes I fall hard.
I have not had much of an opportunity to experience a place like this but I have plenty more spice places on my list which is for-sure-definitely-not-no-way a bucket list. Our time in Maras was short. We were on a schedule and we were hustled out of there. But I'm honestly not sure what else I would have lingered for at this place. Our short time seemed enough. This place is so simple and so valuable at the same time. Now I just need to go somewhere black pepper is grown.
I have not had much of an opportunity to experience a place like this but I have plenty more spice places on my list which is for-sure-definitely-not-no-way a bucket list. Our time in Maras was short. We were on a schedule and we were hustled out of there. But I'm honestly not sure what else I would have lingered for at this place. Our short time seemed enough. This place is so simple and so valuable at the same time. Now I just need to go somewhere black pepper is grown.
How We Did It
Maras is an easy drive from Cusco and admission to the property is easy enough. There's an entrance booth where you pay your 20 Soles (about $6 US as of this writing) and from there you can make your way to the canyon and check the place out.
Since we like to drive as little as humanly possible on vacation, we traveled to Maras with Inkayni Peru Tours on their Maras-Moray-Chinchero half day tour. We found these guys through Viator but there's no reason you need to go through that website. Just save the cost of the service charge you'll pay to Viator or better yet, tip your guide or driver or both a little extra. Yeah, I know I already said this exact same thing when talking about the Chinchero portion of that excursion but you can never remember enough to tip when you are on these tours. And don't forget the driver! He's working too!!
Inkayni Peru Tours were great to us and I'd highly recommend their service. The best part about the tour we took is that it's private so you don't have to share it with anyone else. Sure it costs a little more but it allows you a little bit of control over the agenda. No matter how you get there, I'm confident Maras will be amazing for you.
Maras is an easy drive from Cusco and admission to the property is easy enough. There's an entrance booth where you pay your 20 Soles (about $6 US as of this writing) and from there you can make your way to the canyon and check the place out.
Since we like to drive as little as humanly possible on vacation, we traveled to Maras with Inkayni Peru Tours on their Maras-Moray-Chinchero half day tour. We found these guys through Viator but there's no reason you need to go through that website. Just save the cost of the service charge you'll pay to Viator or better yet, tip your guide or driver or both a little extra. Yeah, I know I already said this exact same thing when talking about the Chinchero portion of that excursion but you can never remember enough to tip when you are on these tours. And don't forget the driver! He's working too!!
Inkayni Peru Tours were great to us and I'd highly recommend their service. The best part about the tour we took is that it's private so you don't have to share it with anyone else. Sure it costs a little more but it allows you a little bit of control over the agenda. No matter how you get there, I'm confident Maras will be amazing for you.
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