Cusco Day 5 - Working in the Salt Mines

Tuesday May 24

Today was moving on day as we checked out of our place in Cusco in the morning, left our bags with the desk and headed out for the day. We met our driver Mario, or was it Mad Max, as we were walking down the hotel stairs and he ushered us to his one man road owning machine.

He was about the rudest driver that we had encountered on our trip so far. We have had aggressive drivers, but this guy was something else. Not rude to his passengers, but to everyone and everything not seated on his bumper car.

Riley and her tummy have not been taking to the crazy roads in Peru so she usually gets shotgun along with some ginger or Dramamine.

We were taken to some interesting sites today that were unique in their own right.  The Inka built the Salineras de Maras, salt pans, and they are still in operation today. It is an ingenious use of local mineral content, availabile water, and the terrace structure that we have seen in so many other places.

We were able to walk right down among the pans of water which were used to distill the salt.  It would have been very easy to fall in a pan or slip off a terrace, something that the ambulance chasers in the U.S. would have capitalized on.

On the way down into this area Patti about had a heart attack as we were on the cliff side of this tiny road with no shoulder, no guardrails, and no survival. This is where really began to notice the badittude of our driver. He had folks yelling at him near the bottom. So much so that it seemed like this bus was going to push him, us, off the cliff until he finally yielded and backed up. People were of no concern either as he got about as close to bumping into a few as I have ever seen.

Our next stop was Moray, a unique terrace structure that was constructed in some natural depressions that create a slightly different micro-climate with each step. Reportedly, the temperature can very by close to 3 degrees between each step allowing the Inka to grow crops here that normally would not given the natural conditions. This temperature variation is generally true in all the tarraces to some extent but none as dramatic as this given its circular shape in this depression.

We finished up our Cusco stay with our final visit to Kebabs R Us to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary. We have been in foreign countries on our anniversary for the last several years. Over dinner on this one Patti said that she always imagined that we would go off to Europe for our 20th anniversary, I guess that is not going to happen as this wraps up the world touring for a while.

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