Day 6: Sacred Valley III (Moray and salt mine in Maras)

Another shiny day and great excitement about what today's trip would have for us. We wanted to enjoy as much variety as possible, so instead of visiting more well-known Inca sites, such as Ollantaytambo, we opted for different less crowded places: circle-shaped terraces in Moray, and an odd salt mine, both near the town of Maras.

It was a bit tricky to get to these places. We had to take a bus towards Urubamba, which "station" was a huge garage somewhere in Cusco. We had to wait for a while because the drivers didn't agree on which bus should leave first, but we finally made it. We asked the driver to drop us off at Maras, which apparently was in the middle of nowhere. Just a road sign with the name, but no civilization around...Now, the scenery couldn't be better: countryside, fresh air, snow-peaked mountains in the distance. Fortunately, there was one car there and a few locals waiting for lost tourists like us at the beginning of the road that led to Maras. At first we wanted to go on foot, thinking it was not too far, but good thing we trusted the young taxi driver who took us there for a good price. Maras and the terraces were dead far!

These circle-shaped terraces (the blog's background image) were amazing, both in appearance and use. Unbelieveable as it might seem, each level has its own microclimate, and they were used as agricultural labs by Incas for growing different vegetables or grains.
 

 

 

The youngster drove us back to Maras. Our next stop would be the salt mine, only around 3 km (1.9 miles) away, so we decided to stretch our legs a bit and walk the distance. There's a road going there, but we took a footpath. Good choice. A lonely downhill tourist- and car-free path with painted-like snow-capped mountains in front of us, farmers ploughing yellow fields with oxen drawn ploughs, perfect temperature... Again, we had the privilege to be the only ones on the path, well except when we saw a figure and several animals far in the distance coming towards us on the footpath. It turned out to be a man walking with his dog (called Rambo) and about five donkeys, which he appeared to be herding in. You don’t see that everyday! The path was winding and ever-changing with a trickling stream alongside, but we noted that the snow-capped peaks in the distance seemed for a good while to be a mirage that didn’t get any closer.

huge cactus

After about an hour and a half of this refreshing walk, we were in the mountains and the scenery was becoming more dramatic. We stopped at one point to watch a scene play out on a highway far in the distance across the valley from where we stood. The highway was apparently very narrow, because as a bus and another large vehicle approached each other from different directions, they had to stop, the drivers got out, spoke briefly, and then the driver of one had to back up a while before finding a place to pull over enough to give the other enough room to pass.

After a good stroll around several bends, we made out in the distance a huge glimmering white spot along a hillside, which reminded me of the typical white villages in Andalucia; we had reached the saltworks. This is an unique natural spectacle worth seeing. A very salty jet of water, which flows from a thermal spring atop the valley, flows all over the hillside and, when the water evaporates, forms these great, white (of salt) pond-like pools that cascade down the hillside, like the honeycomb pattern of a beehive. People harvest the salt from these ponds for sale as table salt. We were allowed to walk in-between the ponds, so we happily walked through the salty narrow paths and observed some locals working in their own wells. We even tasted a bit of the white substance and sure enough, it was salty!

reaching the salt mine

After we made our way through the white honeycomb of salt, we reached the bottom where water runs clear into a stream and down to a river. Right at the bottom we met an older woman, called Isidora, very short in stature with a warm smile, long braids down to her waist, and wearing tattered traditional Peruvian dress, who was loading a few large rocks of salt onto the back (in a gunny sack) of a small donkey. She explained she was to take the salt several kilometers back to where she lived. I helped her hold the rocks in place so she could evenly distribute the weight and tie the sack in place. This was certainly one of my favourite anecdotes!

We said goodbye to the woman and began to make our way back. Very shortly we met a 16-year-old kid whose family owned one of the ponds. He led us to Tarabamba, a small town where we would get our bus to Urubamba and then back to Cusco.We went on our way downhill through the Urubamba valley and river with the same name. Anywhere you looked around, it was just beautiful, distant from the masses, traffic or big towns.

We were absolutely delighted with the beauty of landscape and things we had done so far. And Macchu Pichu was still waiting for us...so I could imagine myself having a heart attack when the time came.

Once in Cusco, we provided ourselves with some food and other supplies for the big trip the following day. Macchu Pichu is just around the corner now :)