Iluwe Salt Wells

A steep two-to-three-hour climb above Jiwika brings you to a small saline spring used by Dani women for generations to produce salt. The traditional method involves soaking lengths of banana trunk in the brine, drying them in the sun, and burning them; the ash is the salt.

Hire a guide in Jiwika — the path is not obvious, and a guide can interpret what you're seeing and arrange permission to watch (or, if your timing is right, take part). Expect steep ground and a steady climb. Allow most of a day from Jiwika.

things to do sight culture
A story
The Baliem salt wells are an inland anomaly — saline water bubbling out of the highlands hundreds of kilometres from any sea. Dani women still walk hours uphill from villages around Jiwika to soak banana stems in the brine, then carry them home to be dried and burned, with the salt being extracted from the resulting ash.