Half Day Quad Bike ATV Tours to Sacred Valley (Maras Moray)

You will be picked up from your hotel and we will travel for 1hr 30 mins until reaching the village of Cruz Pata at 3550 m.a.s.l.

After a safety briefing we will start Quad Biking through the scenic routes of the Sacred Valley of Incas to Maras.

Grouped together in Peru’s lush Cuzco region, the ringed Incan ruins known as Moray have long been a mystery, but it is looking more and more likely that the nested stone rings may have been part of a large-scale agricultural experiment.

Unlike a number of the elaborate metropolises and statuary left behind by the Incan people, the rings at Moray are relatively simple but may have actually been an ingenious series of test beds. Descending in grass-covered, terraced rings, these rings of rings vary in size, with the largest ending in a depth of 30 meters (98 feet) deep and 220 meters (722 feet) wide.

Studies have shown that many of the terraces contain soil that must have been imported from other parts of the region. The temperature at the top of the pits varies from that at the bottom by as much as 15ºC, creating a series of micro-climates that — not coincidentally — match many of the varied conditions across the Incan empire, leading to the conclusion that the rings were used as a test bed to see what crops could grow where.

This proto–America’s Test Kitchen is yet another example of the Incan ingenuity that makes them one of the most remarkable declined societies in the planet’s history.

Continuing the ride we’ll arrive to Maras. We will explore carry the crystal-white terraces of the pre-Incan salt mines.

Fed by a small local stream, the field of angular, interlocking earthen evaporation pools near the small Peruvian town of Maras has been providing local inhabitants with salt and visitors with a stunning view for generations.
Cascading down a hillside valley like uneven steps, the Salinas de Maras (as they are known in the local tongue) were first created sometime in the 1400s by the Incas. While there is no transcribed record of the ponds’ creation, they seem to have been passed down and expanded by a small number of owners over hundreds of years. Salt is harvested from the patchwork of shallow pools via a process of evaporation. A natural spring feeds a salt-rich stream that flows down into the pools, which are then opened and dammed individually as needed. Once one of the pools is filled, the water is allowed to evaporate, and then the salt crystals are scraped off the ground with simple instruments. Then the whole process begins again.

The area is not widely industrialized, and the salt is still just bagged up, packaged, and sold at market. Today there are about 3,000 pools that are still harvested by the community of local families who control the salt pans, the transport roads to the valley, and generally the entire salt production from the site, which remains much the same as as it was when the Inca discovered it over 1,000 years ago.

After the tour and return to Cusco.