ITINERARY
We pick you up at your hotel again at 08:30am in our Private Tourist Bus to start our tour in the following places:
Maras:
Situated west of Cusco at 3,300 m.a.s.l., from there you can watch the Urubamba mountain range and its snowy peaks of “La Veronica” (5,682 m.a.s.l.) and the “Chikon” (5,530 m.oas.l.). Its important occupation started when Cusco noblemen of the Inka times were dispossessed off their palaces in the city and they had to exit the city to establish themselves in other little settlements like Maras.
It has an old church built on adobes (earthen bricks) still standing, this is typical of the small town religious architecture, inside this church you can see original Cusco School picture canvases kept for centuries there.
Then we will continue on to:
Moray:
It is situated to some 7 kms. southwest of Maras; it’s a superb archaeological complex unique in its class in the region. It consists of gigantic natural depressions or holes in the land surface that were used to build agricultural steps or terraces within its contours with its corresponding irrigation canals, it is then a prototype of hothouse or biologic experimental station well advanced ahead its time that helped the early South American peoples to supply a 60% of the vegetal products that he needs, that the Andean man consumes more than a thousand and a half varieties of potatoes, a hundred and a half or corn varieties and much more other products that these fertile lands offers.
Maras “Salineras” or Salt Mines:
Situated northwest of the town of Maras, it consists by a compound of some more than 5,000 little “pans” or salt holes with a mean area of 5 sq. m., during the time of summer when there is no rain they are filled or “watered” each 3 days with salt waters that outpours from a natural water fountain ubicated above the salt holes atop the mountain in order that when it evaporates, the salt contained within it solidifies gradually, after that the salt in solid state is beaten and in this way it gets granulated and processed to be bagged into plastic bags and sent to the markets; today, to this salt is being added Iodine, and by this reason its use is not harmful to the people. Finally, we will be returning to Cusco at about 15:30 in the afternoon.
