For our last day in Cuzco I knew I really wanted to get out of the city to see the famous salt mines about an hour away. Our flight was departing at 3:15pm so we had signed up with a tour company for a private tour with just our own driver and no guide. This way we could go at our own pace and be back early enough for our flight. The typical standard tour departs around 9:00am and arrives back in Cuzco around 3:00pm, including stops at both Maras and Moray, another ancient ruin close by. The cost to join a group tour is $20 per person, but since we had limited time and had just seen Machu Picchu we decided to skip the Moray part and just focus on Maras instead.
9:00am came and no one showed up at our hotel to pick us up. After we called them at almost 9:30 they said someone was on their way. Long story short, someone did eventually show up but we spent the next hour following them all around the city until we eventually realized they thought we were part of the group tour. We explained we had a private tour scheduled, the company claimed that wasn’t the case because there was no confirmation, they tried to charge us extra money than our original quote since now it was “last minute”. Eventually we just took our money back and decided we would figure it out on our own. I don’t like people taking advantage of others for any reason and wanted no part in being ripped off by these guys so once we left we had a quick huddle to decide what to do. It was now 10:00ish am as we had wasted so much time but Pablo just flagged down a taxi and asked if they would take us directly to the Salt Mines. The guy said sure! It cost us 100 soles for him to drive us both to the Salt Mines and then wait for us for an hour while there. This ended up being cheaper than what the tour company wanted to charge us anyway and they literally had done the same thing, just flag a taxi down in the street. Morale of the story: If you need to do a quick trip there and don’t mind not having a guide, just hire a taxi yourself.
The entrance fee to the Salineras is 10 soles per person and we really could have used more than an hour there. I would say at least 1 1/2, maybe even two hours, would be ideal. This is partly because it takes a little bit of time to hike down into them from the parking area and honestly just because the views are so out of the this world! You want time to explore and walk around.
It’s one of the last manually working salt mines in the world, to my understanding. This means there’s no machinery used to harvest the salt here, it’s all done by hand. The workers around are friendly and a few told us a little about the process. It was much more hot being down in the salt mine than back in Cuzco and I was not prepared for that. I highly suggest bringing layers as we were covered in our warm wool sweaters because of how chilly it had been in Cuzco.
Of course you can buy samples of the salt if you’d like which we didn’t do but now wish we had. They have some small gift shops near the parking lot to purchase salt or other souvenirs and they have toilets available to use for 1 sole as well. I would also recommend bringing water and sunglasses as the sun reflecting off the pools of salt is so bright and you will get thirsty from the heat. The roads to get there are also quite curvy in sections and I know Pablo was starting to feel a little car sick by the time we arrived so just a caution there as well. Though it may seem like a bit of a drive to reach it, I believe it was 100% worth it as it ended up being one of my highlights for the trip! It’s just something you don’t see everyone on a regular basis and a really unique experience. If you make it to Cuzco, definitely add in some time to visit Maras!
Fire Round the World 