Wednesday, December 18, Cusco/Inca #2, Peru
Cusco/Inca #2, Peru
After breakfast, we embarked on a scenic drive through the Sacred Valley and stopped at the astonishing Salt Pans of Maras. Built in terraces ascending the side of a deep canyon, these glistening ponds have harvested salt from springs for centuries (since AD 300). Next we visited a local village. We enjoyed a warm welcome from the residents, who happily told us about their daily lives.
We bid farewell to our new friends, then continued on through the valley for a deluxe picnic lunch made with local ingredients in an idyllic natural setting. Afterward, we called on the colorful Andean village of Chincheros, with its colonial church housing a large collection of paintings. We visited the home of a master weaver who is helping to keep the tradition of Peruvian textiles alive. We enjoyed a demonstration of wool spinning.
On our way early in the morning, heading the Sacred Valley and the astonishing Salt Pans of Maras. We made a picture stop at an overlook of a large valley.
Maras is a town in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, 25 miles north of Cusco, in the Cusco Region of Peru. The town is well known for its salt evaporation ponds, located toward Urubamba from the town center, which have been in use since Inca times. The salt-evaporation ponds are 2 1/2 miles north of the town, down a canyon that descends to the Rio Vilcanota and the Sacred Valley of the Incas. There are over 5,000 salt ponds, some owned by families and others unused.
The salt ponds are worked only during the dry season (May-October). Fresh salt water is added to the ponds every 2-3 days, depending on the color of the top layer of salt (water evaporates very quickly, leaving three layers of salt: White powdery, pink, and black). The white, powdery layer is OK for human consumption. The pink contains 84 minerals, great for humans, but there is no iodine (Inca iodine was consumed from fish, seaweed, and turnips). The black salt was/is used for bathing. Salt is harvested from each pond monthly using shovels, carefully removing one layer at a time.
The salt ponds are worked only during the dry season (May-October). Fresh salt water is added to the ponds every 2-3 days, depending on the color of the top layer of salt (water evaporates very quickly, leaving three layers of salt: White powdery, pink, and black). The white, powdery layer is OK for human consumption. The pink contains 84 minerals, great for humans, but there is no iodine (Inca iodine was consumed from fish, seaweed, and turnips). The black salt was/is used for bathing. Salt is harvested from each pond monthly using shovels, carefully removing one layer at a time.
Since pre-Inca times (~300 AD), salt has been obtained in Maras by evaporating salty water from a local subterranean stream. The highly salty water emerges at a spring, a natural outlet of the underground stream. The flow is directed into an intricate system of tiny channels constructed so that the water runs gradually down onto the several hundred ancient terraced ponds. Almost all the ponds are less than four meters square in area, and none exceeds thirty centimeters in depth. All are necessarily shaped into polygons with the flow of water carefully controlled and monitored by the workers. The altitude of the ponds slowly decreases, so that the water may flow through the myriad branches of the water-supply channels and be introduced slowly through a notch in one sidewall of each pond. The proper maintenance of the adjacent feeder channel, the side walls, and the water-entry notch, the pond's bottom surface, the quantity of water, and the removal of accumulated salt deposits requires close cooperation among the community of users. It is agreed among local residents and pond workers that the cooperative system was established during the time of the Incas, if not earlier. As water evaporates from the sun-warmed ponds, the water becomes supersaturated and salt precipitates as various size crystals onto the inner surfaces of a pond's earthen walls and on the pond's earthen floor. The pond's keeper then closes the water-feeder notch and allows the pond to go dry. Within a few days the keeper carefully scrapes the dry salt from the sides and bottom, puts it into a suitable vessel, reopens the water-supply notch, and carries away the salt. Color of the salt varies from white to a light reddish or brownish tan, depending on the skill of an individual worker. Some salt is sold at a gift store nearby.
The salt mines traditionally have been available to any person wishing to harvest salt. The owners of the salt ponds must be members of the community, and families that are new to the community wishing to propitiate a salt pond get the one farthest from the community. The size of the salt pond assigned to a family depends on the family's size. Usually there are many unused salt pools available to be farmed. Any prospective salt farmer need only locate an empty currently non-maintained pond, consult with the local informal cooperative, learn how to keep a pond properly within the accepted communal system, and start working.
Spring water channel.
Notice the brilliant green, large humming bird in the center of the pictures above and below.
Growing their own for chapel below.
On our way traveling up and out of the canyon with the numerous switch backs; yep, it's a deep canyon.
Sacred Valley of the Incas.
On our way to visit an Indigenous village.
Our bus climbed several thousand feet to reach this village.
Mixing mud with straw to make adobe blocks.
The form must be wet to keep blocks from sticking to it.
The form must be removed within second to keep the mud together. Two to three months are needed for proper drying. About 4,500 are needed for the average size house.
Village chief preparing a religious ritual.
Wrist band presents.
On our way again; passing adobe housing.
They do have electricity and the chief has a cell phone for emergencies.
Children must attend school for twelve years. They must descend 2,000+ steep mountain every day and return early afternoon.
School at bottom of mountain.
Cows provide power to cultivate farm lands.
Town square with statues under repair.
Red bags at ends of poles tell neighbors their home brewed beer is ready to share and drink.
Stop in!
Yes, that's snow on the Andes.
Farmlands.
Pair of bulls given to newly weeds; one bull for fertility and one for happiness.
Our facility beside a lake for lunch.
Andean village of Chincheros.
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Colonial church of Chinchero housing a large collection of paintings.
Among the most beautiful churches in the valley, this colonial church is built on Inca foundations. The interior, decked out in merry floral and religious designs, was well worth seeing.
Object outlines made by Incas.
Inca walls.
Town vendors.
Bused to a weaver who hosts locals to train and employ indigenous women.
Spinning wool into yarn.
Dying yarn.
Green cactus produces red dye.
Cooking yarns to achieve different colors.
Weaving options.
Knitting.
We soon headed back to Cusco and our hotel for another evening of rest.
We soon headed back to Cusco and our hotel for another evening of rest.
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