Maras:
Maras is a town located 48 km northwest of the city of Cusco, 12 km from Urubamba and at 3,028 m.a.s.l. Temperatures range between 1 and 21 degrees Celsius. Maras was an important town during the Viceroyalty (it was the main salt supplier of the southern highlands), as shown by its church and the old mansions that still bear the coats of arms of the indigenous nobility on their facades. The houses are built of adobe, with white walls, blue roofs and windows, and the streets are of stone and earth. On the lintels you can read, carved in stone, the date each house was built, the name of its owner, or a coat of arms or ornament.
Maras was founded by the Spanish in 1556 and placed under the encomendero Pedro Ortiz de Orue, whose house stands one block from the main square; the lintel of its door bears the details of its owner. It was he who started this custom, which is still alive today. We recommend seeing the house that belonged to the Inca Tupac Sinchi Roca and the Church of San Francisco de Asís, commissioned by Orue, which has four 17th-century Baroque altarpieces with beautiful carvings covered in gold leaf.
Its walls are decorated with paintings by Antonio Sinchi Roca, of the Cusco School, depicting scenes from the Gospel and portraits of saints. Today the main economic activity of Maras is agriculture. Among its most visited attractions are the salt mines, located 10 km from the town, and very close by are the terraces of Moray.
The Maras salt mines, or salineras as they are also called, are salt pans whose exploitation is as old as the Tawantinsuyu. Thousands of shallow pools filled with salt water are carved into the slopes of Qaqawiñay mountain and fed by an underground hypersaline source that originated 110 million years ago during the formation of the Andes mountain range (the Andean orogeny).
The use of Maras salt dates back thousands of years and is passed down within each family, but it is managed communally. The Quechua name of the salt mines is Kachi Raqay, and they consist of some five thousand pools of about 5 square meters each. The water seeps into the pools and evaporates under the intense sun, causing coarse salt crystals to form; after a month the salt reaches a depth of 10 cm and has to be harvested. The view over the whole complex of pools is spectacular. The local people show visitors their ancestral techniques and let them take part in the harvest, as well as in Andean festivities and rituals.
The site is highly recommended for photography lovers, and the area is ideal for trekking and mountain biking.
Moray:
Moray is a Quechua word and names an area occupied since time immemorial by the farming communities of Mullak’as and Misminay. According to the historian Edward Ranney, the Incas used the terraces of Moray, which lie far from the large settlements, as an agricultural site, perhaps to develop their most prized crop, the coca leaf.
John Earls, for his part, claims to have discovered vertical stones on the terraces that would mark the limits of the evening shadows during the equinoxes and solstices; the local people call these stones “ñustas”. Earls concludes that each terrace at Moray reproduces the climatic conditions of a different ecological zone of the Inca Empire.
Thanks to its sheltered position, each of these terraces represents roughly one thousand meters of altitude under normal farming conditions. As a whole, the complex would contain twenty or more miniature ecological zones. The site of Moray may also have served the Incas to calculate the annual production of different parts of the vast Tawantinsuyu.
It is even known that the Incas grew sixty percent of their vegetable species on the terraces of Moray, along with three thousand varieties of potato, maize and many other species. It was also an important center for the domestication, acclimatization and hybridization of wild species that were adapted for human consumption.
Between September and October, hundreds of people from the neighboring communities gather at the circular terraces of Moray to celebrate Moray Raymi, the festival of the sun. The celebrations include folk dances related to the earth, its produce and farming work.
Ollantaytambo:
(Quechua: Ollantay Tampu) is a town and Inca archaeological site, capital of the district of Ollantaytambo (province of Urubamba), in southern Peru, about 90 km northwest of the city of Cusco. At the time of the Spanish conquest it served as the stronghold of Manco Inca Yupanqui, leader of the Inca resistance. Ollantaytambo was a strategic military, agricultural and religious center for administering and controlling the Sacred Valley of the Incas, as can be inferred from its buildings, believed to have been agricultural storehouses and military structures such as walls and watchtowers (probably to guard against the jungle peoples). Some 150 steps separate the summit from the lower part, where you can admire the perfectly carved stones, clearly dedicated to the worship of water and very similar to those of Tipón (in the South Valley of Cusco). This place was a ceremonial center for purification and the cult of water. The archaeological site comprises a series of stacked terraces, with impressive, finely worked stone blocks on the upper terrace (the Temple of the Sun). The Inca remains at Ollantaytambo are the vestiges of the town that Pachacútec ordered built after subduing its inhabitants and conquering these lands: imposing agricultural infrastructure made up of hundreds of terraces and canals to secure the farmland, control and lookout posts on the hilltops, and domestic and ceremonial buildings. Manyaraqui Square, with its fountains, is believed to have been part of a center for the worship of water. On Pinkuylluna Tunupa hill stand huge two- and three-story stone buildings thought to have been agricultural storehouses (qollqas) or lookouts, and you can also see an enormous rock resembling the face of an Inca watching over Ollantaytambo.
The town of Ollantaytambo is known as the “living Inca town” because its people still live according to the customs and traditions inherited from their ancestors.
From Ollantaytambo it is possible to visit the village of Willoc, where Quechua is spoken and whose red and black clothing resembles the huayruro, a red and black seed used as an amulet. Ollantaytambo is the only original Inca town still in use, as is evident in the fifteen blocks that make up the village.
