Maras and Maray

We spent the day visiting Maras and Maray. Maras is a salt spring that feeds evaporation pools providing a unique pink salt, among other minerals. The engineering of these salt evaporators on the side of a mountain is remarkable in that the have been built, maintained and the salt mined w/o mechanical equipment. Their are over 300 pools Nd the elevation from the spring to the lowest pool is over 150 feet. All fed from a mountain spring providing 10 gallons per minute. All of this at ~10,000 feet above sea level. I am not certain the pics do it justice. 

Maray is a pre-Incan agricultural area designed to low the natives an opportunity to control the soil conditions ( acidity/alkalinity), temperature by change in elevation, rainfall (by flooding certain levels), and other conditions. They uses this info to decide what they would grow where within the empire. Again, the engineering is outstanding! We hikes to the bottom and it was 18 degrees warmer at the bottom than the top. Even the youngsters were winded from this hike at 10,000 feet. 

We started the day at a local "farmers" market. Corn, potatoes, quinoa, beans, pigs, chickens, ducks, cuy (guinea pig, tastes like greasy chicken) along with ropes, alpaca garments and a sheep soup ( w all parts of the sheep included, NOPE did not try it) all being sold by locals competing w each other for customers. They used bullhorns to advertise their wares. Really interesting and busy. 

Brad