Urubamba and Maras
From Chinchero, my next stop was Urubamba. The town is located in the heart of the Sacred Valley alongside the Urubamba River and was one of the main agricultural centers of the Inca Empire. Located 57 km (35 mi) northwest of Cusco down the Chinchero route, Urubamba is the largest town in the Sacred Valley with a population of some 25,000 people. Nearby is the small town of Maras. From Maras we were headed to the Moray archaeological site and the salt-pans of Salinas.
Moray is a group of deep, gigantic, bowl-like natural depressions in the earth in which concentric, circular stone terraces were carved into the landscape by the Inca. The series of circular platforms are deep and wide. They descend down to some 150 m (492 ft) and measure about the same in width. The terracing, a series of irrigation channels and the discovery of different seeds on the terraces have led scientists to believe that Moray was once an Inca crop lab. Many think the site was used by the Inca to cultivate resistant and hearty varieties of plants high in the Andes. The Incas planted wheat, quinoa, panti, kantu flowers (Cantua buxifolia, the Peruvian national flower), corn and some 4,000 varieties of potatoes at Moray and experimented with different elevations/altitudes, sunlight exposures and temperatures within the terraced depressions. Definitely one of the coolest agricultural labs I've ever seen.
The salt-pans of Salinas reportedly consist of some 5,700 salt collection pools. I wonder who counted them all. About 600 years ago, the Inca discovered a natural salt water spring in the valley. They channeled the spring water into thousands of pools where the water evaporates and leaves crystallized salt to be harvested. The pools each yield about 150 kilos of unrefined salt per month. The Cusco & Machu Picchu Moon Handbook notes this is the salt exported and marketed as "Peruvian pink salt".
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