(inspiring guitar music)

Beneath the Qaqawinay mountain, where these salt pans sit, runs a salt-filled underground spring.

The pans, each no more than a foot deep, fill with this natural spring water, which the sun evaporates, leaving behind the natural salt crystals.

Created between 500 and 1000 A.D., it was the Incans who built them up into what we see today.

Currently there are over 3,000 active pans, each one owned by a different family in the Maras community, and are hand-mined much the same as when the Incans were here.

Each pool yields about 330 pounds of salt per month.

When the salt has been mined, the pool is refilled and the process begins again.

Visiting these pans allows you to marvel at the beauty of nature, and of man's ingenuity.