After a hotel pickup, you will leave from Cusco at 9:00am. The first stop is Maras, from which you will get to the salt mines. Admire these salt mines which display a bizarre spectacle of beauty. Located on a wide-open hill above the Urubamba Valley, a natural salt water stream runs underground. Learn from your knowledgeable guide how, in pre-Incan times, these have been evaporating the salty water from this stream in order to obtain the salt that gets left behind.
Your guide will also explain this entire process to you. The highly salty water emerges at a spring, the flow is then directed into an intricate system of tiny channels constructed so that the water runs gradually down onto the several hundred ancient terraced ponds. The water, which is exposed to the sun, leaves salt on the land.
After visiting the salt mines near Maras, head to the Moray ruins, which are made up of three coliseums thought to have been used by the Incas as a sort of open air crop laboratory. The coliseums consist of several enormous terraced circular depressions, the largest of which is about 30 meters (98 feet) deep. Admire these terraces which are arranged in concentric circles and are reminiscent of an ancient Greek theater. After the tour you will return to Cusco.
Note: Entrance fees are not included in the price.