Maras, Peru

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Maras is a town in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, 40 kilometers north of Cusco, in the Cusco Region of Peru. The town, in the eponymous district, is well known for its salt evaporation ponds, located towards Urubamba from the town center, which have been in use since Inca times. The salt-evaporation ponds are four kilometers north of the town, down a canyon that descends to the Rio Vilcanota (as the upper Urubamba River is known) and the Sacred Valley of the Incas. There are over 5,000 salt ponds, some owned by families and others unused. The Maras area is accessible by a paved road, which leads from the main road leading through the Sacred Valley between Cuzco and the surrounding towns. Tourist sites in the area include the colonial church, the nearby Moray Inca ruins, the local salt evaporation ponds, and the surrounding scenery. Since Incan times, salt has been obtained in Maras by evaporating salty water from a local subterranean stream. The highly salty water emerges at a spring, a natural outlet of the underground stream. The flow is directed into an intricate system of tiny channels constructed so that the water runs gradually down onto the several hundred ancient terraced ponds. Almost all the ponds are less than four meters square in area, and none exceeds thirty centimeters in depth.