Moray and Maras Salt Mines Cusco Tour

Full Day Tour

We will begin this adventure at 9:00 a.m. as we drive from Cusco to the village of Chinchero, located some 27 km northeast of the city, where we will be able to visit the small local church which the Spanish built over the foundations of Inca walls, as well as the plaza where a traditional market is held on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Here, local people exchange their produce and sell their handcrafts. After spending some time enjoying the atmosphere of the village, we will continue to Cheqoq, a series of Inca water channels and granaries which few tourists are given the opportunity to visit. We will then continue to the circular agricultural terraces of Moray, which were once part of an Inca agricultural research station where they developed new crops strains. After enjoying an open air picnic lunch we will continue our trip by visiting the salt mines of Maras, before ending our day by walking to the village of Tarabamba, very close to the river, where our vehicle will be waiting to take us back to Cusco or our hotel in the Sacred Valley of the Incas.

Duration of the trip: approximately 8 hours. This tour is available any day throughout the year.

Travel Information

Maras

Located to the west of the Cusco to 3,300 m.a.s.l. from there is appreciated the mountain range of Urubamba and the snow peaks of “La Verónica” (5,682 m.a.s.l.) and the “Chikón” (5,530 m.a.s.l.) Their important occupation began when the noble cusqueños of the Inkario were stripped of their palaces in the Qosqo and had to go out to settle in other small towns like Maras.

It has a church made of adobe, typical of the religious architecture of the village, inside the church are kept canvases of the Cusqueña School.

Moray:

It is about 7 km southwest of Maras. It is about depressions or gigantic natural holes in the surface of the land that were used to construct in their contours agricultural terraces or platforms with their respective irrigation channels, it is therefore a prototype of greenhouse or experimental biological station enough advanced for its time that helped that the American man of the antiquity inherited to the humanity a 60% of the vegetable products that consumes, that the Andean man consumes a thousand and a half of diverse varieties of potatoes, a hundred and a half of corn, and many other products.

Salt mines: “salt mines”

Located to the northwest of the town of Maras, they are constituted by about 3000 small wells with an average area of about 5 m², during the dry season they are filled or “irrigated” every 10 days with salt water that emanates from a natural spring located in the superior part of the wells so that when the water evaporates, the salt contained in this one solidifies gradually, later the salt is beaten and thus granulated. Finally we will be returning to the city of Cusco at 2:30 p.m. approx.