The salt pools worked by hand since before the Incas

There are over 6,000 individual salt pools step down a hillside in the Sacred Valley, each one owned and worked by a local family, in a tradition that predates the Inca empire entirely, tracing back to the pre-Inca Wari civilisation and possibly to around 200 AD.

What's stayed constant the whole time is the method. No industrial machinery is used, not now and not for centuries, just gravity fed aqueducts channelling naturally salty spring water into thousands of shallow pools, left to evaporate in the sun exactly as it always has been. It's the largest set of pre-Hispanic salt mines anywhere in Peru, and it's still entirely hand worked, passed down through generations of the same families.

I painted the salt pans in watercolour and ink, that patchwork of white and ochre pools. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: The Maras Salt Pans, Peru · Travel Poster