Traditions: weaving, growing and making salt

Another full-on day visiting Inka sites, learning about making and dying alpaca wool, being dazed by Inka farming and visiting ancient salt pans. This is a highly-selective introduction to some of the things we saw and learnt.

An early stop at a weaving studio in Chinchero and we were smitten with this small boy who wanted to show us some different kinds of maize (learning very young):

His mother – a true salewoman – had excellent English and proceeded to explain the process of cleaning, dying and spinning alpaca wool. First, the wool is washed several times using a natural root as soap (she grated the root into hot water and showed us how it became sudsy:

She then showed us an amazing collection of natural mosses, leaves, plants and other bits and pieces used to dye the alpaca wool.

She explained the difference between baby alpaca (the finest quality) and alpaca – baby alpaca is cold to the touch and comes from the first cut of the alpaca – the name doesn’t mean the wool comes from babies. And then of course we were shown all the goods on sale, made by her and 30 other families nearby. Needless, to say, we bought a few things (and yes, Sue did get her jumper).

We have seen the clothing she and another woman wore everywhere in the immediate area. And of course, she was obliging enough to pose with her alpacas (who were quite smelly).

Our next stop involved quite a bit of climbing, crossing a massive Inka square and discovering more dramatic Inka terraces. As it was Sunday morning, there appeared to be people taking mass – but not in the church for some reason:

We stopped to look at crazy people hanging off zip wires and cycling in the air while taking in the stunning views which were with us all day:

After lunch in a funny isolated place where the owner stood at the top of the road waving a menu and, when we’d inspected it, his daughter then jumped in the car and guided us to the restaurant, we went to visit Moray.

Moray is a series of terraces, once thought to be a kind of Inca agricultural laboratory. The temperature increases at each level so that by the bottom it is 15 degrees warmer than the top. But recent thinking is that it was for ceremonies and the like: who knows?

And then – and then – we went to the Maras saltpans which are thought to have been in operation somewhere between 500 to 1100 AD, and built by the Wari civilisation. The Inca began overseeing production but the ownership and administration of the ponds were given to different families in the nearby community – and they still have full control of their ponds, having passed them down the generations. There are over 3000 ponds, locally owned by 600 families.

The ponds are white in the dry season, but currently brown because the rain stops the evaporation process:

Close-up, it’s astonishing to see how complex the structure is and to think about how long the salt has been mined. We did, of course, buy several packets to bring back!