Living The Experience

Maras Moray

Another great tour to take in Cusco is the Maras and Moray one. It's a 6-hour tour departing and arriving in Cusco, passing by the Chincheros community and archeological site.
The tour starts at the hotel, when we take a touristic bus at 7:30 a.m., to go to the village of Maras, that's 49 km from Cusco. We take the Chincheros route, because it's paved. On the way we observe the snow-capped mountains of the Sacred Valley and the Vilcabamba ranges. At a little before 9 am, we arrive at the village. There are remains of the pre-hispanic, the colonial and the republic times that can be exemplified by the adobe-made church, some porches of the houses with the noble families' blazons and the art objects inside the church. Maras people believe they emerged from a nearby mountain and were brought here to take care of the empire maintenance.
From Maras village we got to the Moray archeological site. It's a 4 km walk from Maras, going up to 3.800 masl through a dirty path. It's amazing! Opposite to what happens in Nazca, scientists already know its purpose. It was an agriculture experimental centre, where people from all over the empire would bring their seeds of a variety of plant species, so that Incan "scientists", could study them and improve their quality, according to the region it was to be planted in. The whole complex holds 3 great "wells"made in a theater shape. The deepest goes 150 m down, on concentric-almost-perfect huge circles, forming terraces. Each terrace represents one of Peru's micro-climate, and from the deepest to the most superficial level, temperature vary up to 15 degrees. Down on the "well" temperature is a lot hotter than up on the surface. Besides, Andean men had to create an irrigation and draining system to avoid the risks of flood and dryness. All that was possible due to the volcanic stones used to build them! Such intelligent people they were!
From Moray we go to the Salt pans outside of Maras. The history here is also amazing and people still use it nowadays, as they would in the past. The village's economy is based on salt commerce since the XIII century. In that time, they had to supply Cusco and region with salt for domestic use and for the cattle. Exactly as it is up to now! But, how does the salt water "appear" in the more-than-3.000 pans? Well, my dear Watson lol workers have to carry the water from a subterranean river to the salt pans. The water is left there for 3 days, till it's completely evaporated. Once and again they do it until a 10-centimeter layer of pure salt is left on the surface. From there, the same workers take the salt to another place where iodine will be added to it, so it won't harm people's health! The other amazing part of the history is that these pans are placed on the mountain side, not down there on the village. The place is at 3.600 masl!
From the salt pans we head back to Maras village where we can buy a snack or so, and rest for a while. At around 2 pm. we board the bus again and return to Cusco