Salt Pans of Maras, Peru

Since Pre-Inca times, salt has been produced in the salt ponds of Maras in southern Peru.

Water from a highly salty subterranean stream is directed by a huge system of tiny channels into hundreds of ancient terraced ponds.

Most of these ponds are less than four meters square in area, and none exceed thirty centimeters in depth.
 

 As soon as the water has evaporated, the salt farmers harvest the salt.