Chinchero, Moray and Salineras

We left Ollantaytambo the next day to Urumamba and immediately negotiated with a taxi driver to take us up to the high ground for a day to visit few sites...

Chinchero is "the rainbow village". Its got a catholic church built on a Inca ruin which they discovered in the past decade. The church is situated in front the main plaza with lavish decorations inside. The history of this place is intertwined with Incas, Andeans, and the Spanish invasions. In present day, there isn't much activity going on around town except the Sunday market packed by tourists. The locals survive by raising stocks and farming and many by selling souvenirs to tourists. 

Moray, an Inca site, is possibly the experimental site for crops. Moray is multiple big terraced oval/circular depressions. The guess is the Inca's used this site to experiment the crops with different wind, sunlight, and water level. It is truly a mind opener to be walking here, it seems too unrealistic. The dedication put into gaining knowledge is something that I need to learn from them. How was it possible to produce crops on such unique land? What have they learned? Is it recorded? Is it passed down? Similar to many other empires, too much myths and unknowns. 

Salineras, a natural salt production perched on the cliff side, shinning down on the sacred valley. It's an ancient way of getting salt coming from the mountain streams. From far away the site looks like white rice paddies but they are all little ponds of salt water drying up to forming mineral salt. Locals come here every day to gather the dried salt for sale and further production. Some run pass the entire site to go back home. They hop and skip in between the little ponds under the setting sun. I got really excited about their salt and spices mixtures and spent a ridiculous amount of time hopping between the taster samples picking and choosing which ones to load onto my already overweight fat backpack.... Mineral salt, paprika, garlic, coriander mixture. mmmmm mmmm mmm so YUM.