Trekking the high country

This was what the tour company website said about the trek Marianne and I did on her last full day in Cusco:

HIKING MARAS – MORAY - SALINERAS 1D

This is a beautiful walk in which we make a circuit Cusco – Maras – Moray – Salineras – Cusco and visit unique (even for Incas) circle agriculture terraces. We will also visit still used Inca salt mines.

Duration: 1 day

Distance: 18kms

Altitude: 2800msnm – 32msnm

Level: easy

Total hiking time: approximately 7-8 hours.

ITINERARY: We will pick you up from your hotel at about 7am and we will take a transport to the little town of Maras, where we start our walking. Maras has nice colonial doors in its main street. In nearby Moray we will find circle terraces which used to be ”the agriculture Inca laboratory”. The circles were used for the development of different strains of crops. Between the highest and lowest terraces there is a difference of up to 15 degrees. Although the difference between neighboring terraces is very small, it creates distinct microclimates that change growing conditions and allow the propagation of a huge variety of plants each with slightly different growth requirements.

From Moray we walk down for 5 hours through various plantations with a nice mountain views to the salt pans of Salineras. Here more than 5000 terraces are still in production and many families of Maras bring their salt to the market of Urubamba on mules. A short but rather steep walk brings us to Tarabamba in the Sacred Valley from where we will take transport back to Cusco.

That’s not quite how it turned out though. We didn’t meet the guide till 8.30, then had to wait around for over half hour while he picked up supplies. Next, he took us to the wrong place for the local bus. And, as we were then running very late, we didn’t actually walk from Moray, just from Maras to Salineras and then down to Tarabamba.

In spite of all that and mostly because of the stunning landscapes and the most excellent company, it was an amazing day. It's BIG country with the bluest skies, huge fluffy white clouds, the golden colours of ripe wheat and barley in the fields, rich red earth, very few people but many donkeys, a deafening silence except for the birds ...

But enough from me – I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

Road trip to Chinchero and Moray

Yesterday – Sunday – Lynn, a volunteer from Scotland, and I caught a local bus to Chinchero, a small Andean village about 30km from Cusco. The bus wound its way up the steep hills of Cusco and onto the Anta Plains, where Chinchero sits at 3762m (12,343 ft). It is ‘big country’ – there are wide-ranging views of the richly cultivated rolling plains, fringed by the distant snow-capped Vilcanota mountains.



I bought a bag from this smiling saleswoman



My Lonely Planet guidebook says Chincero was known as ‘the birthplace of the rainbow’ to the Incas, which is entirely believable if the colourful textiles manufactured by the local women are any indication. Every Sunday the locals hold a market where you can buy examples of these beautiful textiles, produced from sheep and alpaca wool, dyed using traditional natural products, spun and woven using ancient techniques and tools, and made up into wall hangings, table mats and runners, bags, blankets and rugs.

Of course, we shopped! The haggling was good-natured, the prices excellent, and the salesmen and women happy to be photographed.

We then wandered around the village for a time. It seemed relatively unspoilt by the tourists who visit: there are no signs in English and the locals still go about their daily business dressed in their traditional costumes. The houses are mostly made of adobe (mud) bricks, and have the trademark bull-and-cross ornaments on their roof tops. There are also remnants of the village’s Inca and Spanish colonial heritage, including a magnificent series of Inca stone terraces and a picturesque church.

The Inca ruins were very impressive. The agricultural terraces, some of which are still in use by the locals to grow crops, are attributed to the Incan Tupac Yupanqui, who may have used Chincero as a kind of country retreat some time in the 1480s. The colonial church dates from the early seventeenth century and was built on the foundations of an Inca palace or temple. Sunday mass was in progress when we walked past, so we couldn’t enter to view the apparently beautiful floral and religious paintings on the ceiling and walls, but the paintings in the foyer were certainly lovely.

We ate lunch in a café overlooking the market and were surprised to be greeted in perfect English by the Peruvian hostess. Turns out most of her family now live in the States, including her Texan Peruvian niece, who we also chatted with. The family had returned home for the recent funeral of the family’s grandfather and were just helping out those of their family who run the café.

Next, we hired a local cabbie to drive us for about 20 minutes on ‘dancing’ dirt roads to another Inca site, Moray. Here, the Incas created a strange series of concentric circles by excavating down as deep as 150m (490ft) and removing huge amounts of earth and rock. There have been various theories put forward to explain the site; the current favourite speculates that Moray was a kind of agricultural experiment. The depth and orientation of the circles means there is a 15°C fluctuation in temperature from top to bottom, so the Incas may have been studying the effects of the different climatic conditions on the crops they grew. To me, the terraces didn’t seem wide enough to grow crops easily, though there certainly was a big difference in the temperature as we descended. As with other Inca sites, there are ‘siempre muchos gradas’ (always many steps)!

From Moray, and on the return journey to Chinchero, we had a splendid view over the golden pastures – it’s harvest time here – to nearby Mount Chicón. It’s an impressive 5530 metres (18,143ft) high with several glaciers splayed around its two main peaks.

From Chincero, we caught a tourist bus back to Cusco. It was a comfortable end to a magical day. Getting out of the noisy dusty polluted city to the silent wide-open spaces of the high country was so very refreshing, and both Chincero and Moray were fascinating.