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We stayed the night in Ollantaytambo and decided to contact Javier for another day of exploration. I felt like we had pretty much had enough of condor/puma/snake, so I suggested we spend a day trying to understand Peru 2014. Fortunately, Javier was available.
Javier suggested we visit the salt mines just outside Maras. We just enjoyed the drive thru the valley. As we approached the salt mine he asked if we were up for a hike...we were. Rather than going to the entrance of the salt mines were buses drop off tourists from Cusco, we hiked in cross-country. This gave us the opportunity to walk thru some typical residential areas. It also provided some great vantage points to view the salt mines. "Salt mines" really is not a good terminology, more like evaporative salt pools. Families from two small towns have formed a cooperative, with families earning supplemental income from a few of the pools assigned to them.
"Since pre-Inca times, 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. … It is agreed among local residents and pond "farmers" 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." - Wikipedia.
Our next stop was Urubamba, the largest town in the Inca Sacred Valley. Centrally located to a number of Inca ruins it is a transportation hub. It has a busy market and good example of a busy Peruvian town. And for reasons we could not get explained a very popular location for various NGOs and volunteer organizations. We walked thru the market, tasting various unfamiliar food and checking out what a Peruvian hardware store looked
like. Javier also shared his family. We visited his mother's cemetery, she had passed away at, I believe, 36 from a problem pregnancy. He pointed out the relatives and stories of other in the family mausoleum.
We had met his father down at the city market and had agreed to meet for lunch at their suggested restaurant. Back to our hostal in time to stroll the city and have dinner.
The next morning we had breakfast, looking out over the Inca ruins and had time to explore the outskirts of town, before being picked up by Llamapath to get back to Cusco.
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