The Inca Creation : Maras
After a day of spending time in the Sacred Valley located in the beautiful city of Cuzco, it’s impossible to avoid going on a adventurous, thrilling hike in Maras. Maras is a town in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, its is located at 40 kilometers north of Cuzco, in the Cuzco Region of Peru. People mostly recognize this town because it’s near location of the famous salt evaporation ponds, in use since Inca times.
From the comforting, memorable Hotel Casona de Yucay it was a 30 min, 2 km. drive. I was able to relax and observe the sky, dazzling blue like robin eggs, with big, white, puffy like dandelions clouds. We passed through some enormous mountains filled with vegetation. The bus arrived at the top of a dusty hill. Once all FDR students exited their bus we started descending the hill, in which we stopped at several small shops. They sold many typical jewelry, such as pastel colors, wool bracelets woven with the typical striped textile, snacks, like fried bananas and corn, peruvian souvenirs like Machu Picchu globes, and the salt that originated in this place, which in most places costs S/ 8. Since pre-Inca times the process of evaporation is how the salt has been gained in Maras using local streams. The highly salty water comes out from a spring, a natural outlet of the underground streams. The flow is directed into a complex system of tiny channels made so that the water runs constantly down onto the ancient terraced ponds.
After we passed the stores we entered the Sal de Maras. You could see a wide view of grassy mountains surrounding the squared areas which produced salt. There are approximately 3,000 pounds that fabricate salt! After observing the breathtaking view, I continued my walk. If you hike the entire Sal de Maras route it takes about 1 hour. For most of the field it was forbidden to step on since it was manufacturing salt, so the path that I walked on was very steep. Time passed and I had arrived to the end of the Sal de Maras, what was left now was going down the mountain and arriving to the magnificent Restaurant Tunupa, very close from the end of the hike, where I would devour anything edible.
I trotted downwards determined to finish this extraordinary, joyful hike. While I got closer to finishing this stupendous journey the best thing you can do is appreciate the wilderness and outdoors. I was so distracted thinking about the incredible intelligence the Incas had to make such an accurate and useful creation, that I didn’t even realize I had made it to the bottom of the mountain! I leaped with joy and took a memorable picture of the view. From the bottom of the mountain you can observe the gorgeous view of nature, the humongous trees, the crystal lake, the small houses, and the long trail of the Sal de Maras, which is definitely worth your time.
