Moray & Salineras

Last week Brent and I had a free day, so we decided to see some nearby ruins. Here's the account according to Brent: We caught 2 taxis to some ruins (Moray) kinda near by. But we had to really haggle w- them.. The ruins are concentric circle terraces where they experimented with different ecosystems in each, because the climates change as you go up in altitude. Then we did the unthinkable: we walked from that ruin to another that the taxitsta assured us was 70 km away. Bull. Took us 2 hours. But we were out on our own, (it was a fodor´s guidebook recommendation to walk between) and we didn’t see another human for the entire time. We were walking through high altitude wheat fields, and I grabbed a bunch of it and crunched it in my hands and separated the wheat from the chafe like Brian Dilley (Brenna's cuz) taught me to on his farm in Pasco, WA last summer. We had the best conversation in that 2 hours about where we want to travel, friends, literature, immigration, etc. it was a perfect hike! Also, it lead us to a secret path across a wide ravine (we had to zigzag a lot up and down the mountain and dodge cliffs and stumble and avoid cactus, and huge spiders---which Brenna really didn't do) but we arrived w-o having to pay at the place! The Salineras, where they mine salt on huge terraces was pretty incredible. It was just like looking at rice terraces on steel mountainsides, but weird colors and whatnot from evaporation of salt. We got to see people taking out their own salt. I asked them how much they had to pay to get it....you can walk away from the place with 50 kilos of salt for a few bucks. We then walked from there back to the main highway and caught lunch/dinner at a place called Arco Iris (rainbow) that spans the Urubamba river. The food was great and the presentation was fun, as we ate in a green tropical place under a grass hut overlooking the river with great eats. A cat joined us and ate Brenna's fish skin, and we reminisced over DaVinci...the furry one, that is.