Salineras de Maras

Walking from Maras to the Sacred Valley (the Rio Urubamba can be seen in the background), you come across a huge expanse of prehispanic salt pans that are still maintained by salt workers today. All the white is the salt that is dried from salt water collected in manmade salt bins.


A closer view of some of the salt bins. They're lined with clay and sand that is pounded down to be impermeable so as not to lose the salty water into the ground. Each worker is responsible for maintaining their own bins and adding the water when needed from an intricate system of canals that carry the salt water throughout the complex.

The "ojo principal," from which the salty water flows out of the mountain and natural salt deposits.

Some of the small canals that break off from the main flow.

A woman collecting dried salt from the surface of one of her bins.

Checoc

Lots of storehouses on the hill behind the colonial town of Maras were reconstructed by the INC from 2002-2005. It doesn't seem that any tourists come here, but they're a good example of how the Inka strategically stored products in mass quantities.

A view of the Maras plain (and the colonial reduccion town of San Francisco de Maras), with the plain dropping off into the Sacred Valley before the mountains in the background.

Some of the storage bins in one reconstructed storehouse. These structures have a system of ventilation that brings fresh air in during the day and the cold air in at night.

Moray

Moray is an enigmatic site near Maras, with three deeply depressed sets of concentric terraces. Not much is known about the site's purpose, as there are few documentary sources related to it. If you enlarge the photo, you should be able to see the precarious steps used for climbing down each terrace.

Quinoa, a high altitude crop, growing at the bottom of the largest, reconstructed terracing.

Tourists for scale.

Raqchi

Raqchi is an Inka site about halfway between Puno and Cusco. There was an important temple to the creator god Viracocha there, whose well preserved adobe and stone walls and partial columns can be seen here.


There are several buildings like this one next to the temple that are supposedly the remains of the acllawasi, where the "chosen" girls and women were brought to learn to weave fine cloth, make maize beer, and cook Inka food.

Here you can see a few of the more than 150 round storehouses at Raqchi. The climate here is more stable than in Puno or Cusco, so it would be a good place to store staple goods such as maize and potato, which is what has been recovered here in excavations.

The local community farms the large expanse of land between the temple/acllawasi/storehouses and another group of buildings that seem like houses and an administrative building.

There are a few still functioning baths and canals like this one.