From Lima I flew to Cusco yesterday evening, and today I joined a tour out of the city to the neighbouring Maras region in the Sacred Valley. I signed up for the tour because it seemed the best way to visit the Maras salt mines, and it was only $15 USD!
Our first stop on the tour was this textile factory. Clearly it was a shopping stop, but I actually found it quite interesting.
One of the women explained how all of the textile dyes are derived from local natural ingredients, and they had a display showing where the different colours come from.
After the demonstration I was not interested in shopping, so I went for a short walk in the village.
The next stop was the Inca site called Moray. This was an agricultural laboratory where scientists experimented with various seeds and different growing conditions (each terrace is apparently 2 degrees Celsius different from the next). Pretty interesting spot!
Our final stop of the day was where I was especially interested in going--the salt mines! We could see them from the bus as we drove along the cliff above.
Locals have been mining salt here since before Inca times!
An underground spring brings extremely salty water (17%, I believe I was told) out of the earth. It is a pretty humble spring, actually, considering the economy it supports!
As a whole the salt mines are beautiful . . .
But eventually you start to pick out the pools where work is happening, and this was very interesting to watch.
Here is a little video of some of the work:
Each pool produces 150-200 kilograms of salt per month, and there are piles of sacks of salt nearby (all carried up from the terraces manually!).
I enjoyed watching the work going on so much I was the last of our tour group to leave! From the salt mines we left the Maras region and drove the hour or so back to Cusco.
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