Tuesday, 31 October 2006

Salineras Maras & Moray

Hola,

From Cusco we took a bus to Urubamba. From there we walked to Tarabumba (6km) thru countryside like this

At Tarabamba we turned left and crossed the Rio Urubamba over a ramshackle bridge

to a small ramshackle village at the foot of the hills upon which the Salineras salt pans reside (our first destination).  The river running down the hills shows signs of the salt.

The salt pans themselves.  They still work these to this day, a worker can be seen in a photo below.

From there we walked for an hour and a half to a village called Maras where we met a taxi driver who wanted to charge us a fortune to drive us to Moray (our next destination).  Instead we opted to walk the 5 kms... the longest 5km we have ever walked, we suspect the sign was lying.

Moray is suspected to be an Incan experimental garden, each terrace has its own micro climate for growing different crops. Erin thinks they look a bit like crop circles. When we were there the Peruvians were in the process of restoring them by hand, no power tools in sight.

 

This is why South America is so good at football (Soccer), they will put a field anywhere, even in the bottom of a 500 year old Incan ruin.

This was the view from Moray, not bad.

After our longer than 5km walk we decided to pay for a taxi back to the main road (where we caught a bus back to Cusco). The taxi driver was a lunatic.. it reminded me of Camerons driving.

In all we walked for 4 hours, maybe 20 kms. We were stuffed.

@ 12:37 PM Add Comment

sue: Maybe you need to get bikes! I can get home (20km) in a bit over an hour on my bike. As a born-again biker I think everyone should be doing it! LOVED the gardens, so symmetrical, Tom will be proud of them when he sees the pictures. (11/02/06)

Rochelle: Wow, they are amazing it must have looked impressive. Hope you got yourselves a well deserved cold drink after all that walking!! (11/01/06)

Juanita & Allan: Wow-Regan walking! I wonder if there was supposed to be another number before the 5 in the sign (like a 1 or a 2 maybe)? (11/01/06)