Maras Salt Mines Entrance Fee 2026: S/20, Cash, Not on the Ticket

The Maras salt mines charge S/20 for a foreign visitor in 2026, paid in cash, in soles, at the gate; Peruvian visitors pay less. The fee is not part of the Boleto Turístico, so you pay it on top of the S/70 tourist ticket even on a tour, and no group tour we found includes it in its price. It goes to MaraSal, the company owned by the families of the Maras and Pichingoto communities who work the pans.

Illustration of the Maras salt pans terraced down a hillside, with small visitors on the path above — The Maras salt pans: thousands of small pools on one hillside, fed by a single salty spring.

The fee in context

What	Price (October 2026)	Paid where
Maras salt mines, foreign adult	S/20	At the gate, cash
Moray (on the partial Circuit III tourist ticket)	S/70 for four sites	At Moray, Chinchero or the COSITUC office, cash
A half-day Moray and Maras tour	from $15 in current promotion (usually $16)	Online, in advance

The salt-mine fee is the price charged at the gate in 2026 as published by several Cusco guides and operators; MaraSal does not publish a tariff online. Older guides still quote S/10, the fee before the increase. Tourist-ticket price from COSITUC (cosituccusco.pe), read 26 October 2026; tour price from GetYourGuide, checked October 2026.

Every tour listing we checked lists the salt-mine fee as an extra at S/20, and the tourist ticket at S/70: the van, the guide and the order of the stops are what the tour price buys. So the real cost of a Moray and Maras morning is the tour price plus S/90, unless you already hold a tourist ticket for the valley.

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What the fee pays for

The salt pans are not a ruin but a working salt farm. A salty spring rises above the valley and is channelled across a steep hillside into thousands of small terraced pools; the families who own the pools let them fill, let the water evaporate in the sun and scrape the salt by hand, as people here did before the Incas. MaraSal runs the visit and shares the income among the community members.

Since 2019 visitors keep to the main path and the viewpoints above the pans rather than walking along the pool walls, a rule brought in to keep the salt clean, as Peru’s state news agency Andina reported at the time. You still look straight down over the whole hillside; the shop at the entrance sells the salt, white and pink, by the bag.

Is it worth it, and how long do you need?

Yes: for S/20 it is one of the strangest landscapes in the Cusco region, and it pairs naturally with Moray, about half an hour away by road. Thirty to forty minutes is enough for the path, the viewpoints and the shop; that is about what the tours give it. The pans sit at about 3,300 to 3,380 m, so walk the slope slowly.

If you prefer to ride, the quad bike tour to Moray and the salt mines reaches both on an ATV from a base on the plateau. If you are staying in the valley, Urubamba is the closest town, about 18 km by road; see the where-to-stay guide.

Tips for the gate

Carry small notes. The fee is cash only, in soles; change for large notes is not guaranteed.
Keep the tourist ticket separate. The two fees are paid at different gates, and the salt mines do not take the Boleto Turístico.

The Moray and Maras page compares the tours, and the tourist ticket guide explains the S/70 and S/130 tickets.

How these facts were checked

The S/20 fee and MaraSal’s role are reported by several Cusco guides and operators in 2025 and 2026 and match every GetYourGuide listing for the salt mines we checked; MaraSal publishes no tariff online. The 2019 restriction is from Andina. The salt pans’ altitude is from the Ministry of Culture’s Qhapaq Ñan programme. The tourist-ticket price is from COSITUC, read 26 October 2026. The Urubamba distance was measured along the road.

Maras Salt Mines Entrance Fee: What You Pay and Who Gets It