Chinchero market & ruins

During your day of exploration, you visit the colorful local market in the town of Chinchero. This is one of the most traditional markets in all of South America, and you will be surrounded by locals in their traditional dress all buying and selling their produce.

Next visit the Maras salt pans, a fascinating system of platforms used since the Inca times to extract salt from a natural mountain spring. Visually the shining salt-encrusted terraces are extraordinary. There are beautiful views of the snow-capped mountains of Chicon, Veronica and Salcantay and the stunning Altiplano of the Andes that surround you.

Maras is a typical Andean village that boasts a beautiful 400-year old colonial church. A further 6 km down the road are the experimental agricultural terraces of Moray. Here, different levels of terraces are carved into huge bowls, two large and one small.

Part of the landscape is thought to have occurred naturally and part of which was developed further by the Incas. Their exact purpose is unknown but it is thought that the terraces created varied microclimates in which the Incas determined the optimal conditions to grow their crops.