Tuesday morning was a good
morning. I had felt a little better than I had since arriving in Cuzco. Today
we took a trip to one of my favorite places thus far in the trip – Las
Salineras de Maras. It was an incredible view from above, but also a very
frightening one. I had never felt this close to death in my entire life. The
salt mines were situated at the bottom of the valley of the mountains, and the
only way to get there was to take a one-way narrow road that wrapped itself
closely to the sides of the mountains. No guard rails. Just straight cliffs.
The only thing separating the bus and the bottomless abyss were the tiny pieces
of dirt that tumbled along the edge. After holding on for my dear life in what
could have been my last breath, we successfully made it to the bottom. We
hopped off the bus with our tour guide who then escorted us along the way down
into the salt mines. It was such an amazing excavation site for salt.
After spending some time at
Las Salineras to purchase some trinkets and goodies, we set off to see one of
the significant engineering feat of agriculture at the time at Los Anillos
Agricolas de Moray. What made this ancient site so special was the shear genius
of the people of that time. This site exemplified their underappreciated
intelligence in farming and growing crops by creating ringed craters of
different circumferences at which each ring was dug no more than two meters
deep from its outer ring. By doing such, each leveled contained its own
microclimates as each microclimate being suitable for growing a variety of
different crops. Some say it were aliens, but I say it was pure genius.
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